


The Will

by Guede



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Horror, Evil Gerard Argent, Gen, Mindfuck, Multi, Not Romance, Not That It Helps, Psychological Trauma, Stiles Is A Slasher Film Geek, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-20 16:28:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4794374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We are gathered here today for the reading of Gerard Argent’s will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this as I go, rather than finish it first and then edit as I usually do. This is more of a head-clearing exercise since the weather has been horror-movie-ish lately, and I need a break from my series fics.
> 
> A lot of characters are going to die. The listed pairings are mostly background to the horror.

Stiles let the curtain fall back in place, then pulled at the collar of his suit-jacket. “Man, how much longer are we going to be waiting here? I feel like I’m just waiting for Igor to walk out and ring the dinner gong.”

His father, across the room and making stilted conversation with Derek Hale, looked simultaneously relieved and irritated. “Stiles, why don’t you have a seat?” he called.

“Over here is free,” Scott said, nodding at the empty chair next to him.

“It’s been free since we walked in,” Stiles muttered. But he came over and sat down. He pulled at his collar again, then at his tie. Then he twisted sideways and draped his arm over the back of the chair. “I don’t even know what we’re doing here, Scotty. It’s not like any of us—”

“Stiles!” Scott hissed.

Allison, with a death-grip on Scott’s hand, smiled bravely and deliberately turned her shoulder to her father, who was glowering from the doorway. “No, it’s all right. Nobody liked him and I’m just sorry he’s still dragging you into my family’s problems. He doesn’t have any right to.”

“Now, Allison, that’s no way to speak about your grandfather.” Kate Argent sprawled in her seat, knees angled wide and arms hanging loosely over the backs of the chairs on either side of her. She was the only one not dressed in somber colors, and her blue shirt was a violent disruption in the dark, heavy-paneled room.

When Gerard Argent had bought the former Hale mansion at auction, most of the town had breathed a sigh of relief, assuming he meant to renovate the place. And he had, but if anything, the house looked even more decrepit after repairs than it had before, fresh from the fire that had killed most of the Hale family. The walls were of some dark, dense wood that held every nick and bruise as fresh as the day it was made, while the floors were thickly carpeted with some kind of fabric that sank unpleasantly under your feet, like earth full of rotted leaves and moss. It wasn’t a pleasant place to visit; Chris Argent had opted to keep his family in town, even after his wife had died, and every parent with a school-age child dreaded the principal’s call, not so much because they were angry with their disobedient children or afraid of the consequences as because the principal insisted on having such meetings at his house.

“Well, it’s not like you liked him either, _Kate_ ,” Allison snapped. At the same time, her body huddled closer to her boyfriend, belying the strength of her tone.

Chris Argent took a step into the room, while his sister just laughed and slouched further in her chair. The grin she turned on her niece was very wide and full of teeth, and in the dimly-lit room, it looked like the savage ivory smiles carved onto the strange wooden relics scattered in the corners.

“Aww, what happened to ‘Aunt’?” Kate asked. “You know, Allison, you might have your head turned for now, but you’re still my fav—”

“Kate,” Chris said curtly. His hand sat at his hip, playing nervously over something that wasn’t there.

“Chris,” Kate said sweetly, turning to him. “Well, big brother, since we’re sitting down with the enemy, I thought I’d dig up a few more hatchets while I was at it.”

“Ms. Argent.” Stiles’ father had his hand on his hip, but his hand had a gun to rest on. He stepped away from the wall and a flickering beam of light strayed over the sheriff’s patch on his coat. “It’s a solemn occasion and I’ll ask you to respect it.”

Kate laughed at him, then abruptly rose from her chair. She got one leg down and then paused, half-standing, looking almost delighted at the tensed circle of men around her. Then she flopped back down, a few locks of hair, almost alien in their soft gold, sliding flirtatiously across her face. “Oh, Sheriff, please. If my dad hadn’t hauled us all here, every person in this room would be out celebrating. It’s a truce only because nobody liked the old son of a bitch. Not his children, not his grandchildren—”

Allison swallowed hard and gripped Scott’s hand; her father was going paler by the second.

“—not the poor family he smoked out, wait, sorry, _allegedly_ smoked out of thirty acres of prime land—”

“You’d know,” Derek snarled. He stepped forward, ran up against the sheriff’s barring arm, and didn’t settle back so much as coil down. “You were there, Kate, you were there and you _helped_ —”

“Whoa, hey, hey.” Stiles scrambled up out of his chair, then nearly tripped into the next room. He righted himself and awkwardly straightened so he was standing between Kate and his father. “Hey, now, I’m Polish, and the Argents are French and I don’t know about you, dude, with those eyebrows—” Derek stared at him, momentarily bemused “—seem a little Teutonic, right, but anyway, Hale’s a English name, hale and hearty and all that, and anyway, point is, I don’t think anybody’s cultural tradition is to have a brawl at the wake.”

“It’s not a wake,” muttered Jackson Whittemore. He and his girlfriend had been sitting sulkily in the corner, as far from the others as they could get, and up till now had both been deeply and separately preoccupied with their phones. “A wake’s for before the funeral, you idiot. This is a complete waste of time. We’ve been sitting here for fifteen minutes.”

Lydia nodded absently, her eyes still fixed on her phone. “I’m missing two school dance committee meetings.”

“Oh, what a disaster,” Allison muttered.

Lydia’s eyes snapped up and pinned Allison, who startled and then stared back just as intensely. Both Jackson and Scott seemed at a loss, but then Jackson shook himself. He glanced at Scott, snorted contemptuously at the blank look he got back, and then swung Lydia off his lap and began to get up.

“Well, I don’t see the point in—”

“Leaving, Mr. Whittemore?” Peter Hale strode in from the hall, followed by Jackson’s father and Lydia’s mother. He smiled genially at the room; the miracles of modern plastic surgery had reduced his scars to just a few corrugated patches on his cheek and neck, but something of the inferno remained in the way the permanently thinned side of his upper lip twisted back. “When we’ve not even gotten to our business here?”

Jackson opened his mouth, but his father looked sharply at him. He blinked hard, then slowly sat back down. His father and Lydia’s mother came over to join him and Lydia, and a short burst of whispers broke out about everything in order and getting it over with.

“Read it, Hale,” Chris said lowly.

Peter looked almost over Chris—who went even stiffer at the snub, but kept his peace—and then paused on Derek. He and his nephew, stonefaced now, exchanged a long look before he crossed to the front of the double row of chairs. He considered the one chair turned to face the rows, then bared his teeth at Kate, who was closest to it.

“You’ll excuse me if I stand,” he said.

She looked him over, slow enough to make everyone fidget, and then shrugged. “Well, the sheriff’s right there if I misbehave,” she said.

“How comforting,” Peter said dryly. He glanced around the room again, and when he was sure he had everyone’s attention, he raised the envelope in his hand.

It was sealed with a slab of dull-red wax, thick enough that he couldn’t crack it with just his nails; shavings dropped at his feet like scabs but the seal itself held. Peter sighed again and produced his car keys, and proceeded to rip a ragged line across the top of the envelope. He pulled out two sheets of paper, smoothed them with one hand, and then held them up. His eyes flicked across the top sheet and his face went strangely still.

“Get on with it,” Kate said, with a patently false smile of encouragement. “Whatever the hell he says, it can’t be that bad if he wanted you to read it.”

Peter looked at her. He didn’t make any outward motion, but Kate’s smile grew toothier, while her arms drew slowly off the chair backs and down to her sides.

“Excuse me,” Peter said. He cleared his throat, then looked at the paper. “‘I, Gerard Argent, being of sound mind…’”

* * *

_“…and failing body, wish to dispose of my property as I describe in this document. However, first I will dispose of a few truths. The assembled are no doubt wondering why I have chosen Peter Hale as the executor of my estate, considering the way things stand between his family and my own. The Hales have claimed for years that I and my family have unjustly feuded with them, that we have defamed them for conducting unnatural rites in their isolated, wooded lands, even that we have murdered them._

_Since I’m now dead, I will freely admit to the last one. My family and I did indeed arrange for the fire at their house, and I would regret that it left any survivors, except that I do, in fact, have a sense of humor. I appreciate the irony that the remaining Hales are now best-placed to carry out my last wishes._

_I have named Peter Hale the executor of my estate because, despite his continuing failure to get the better of me and my family, he is a fine attorney and a vicious foe. He will defend what he deems to be his responsibilities to the death. And perhaps that will be literal; I am disappointed that I was not able to provoke him to show his true colors before my death, but I have no doubt that my descendants will eventually have that honor._

_To Peter Hale, then, I leave the Hale property, including the bodies and other items buried at the following coordinates: 41.4092° N, 122.1949° W. That should be quite enough to muster up a conviction for arson, even with his disadvantages._

_To my son, Chris, I leave my undying disappointment in his choice to abandon his own flesh and blood, and to be swayed by his over-tender heart. I also leave him my cookbooks, since Victoria’s death has left him bereft in that department._

_To my granddaughter, Allison, I leave my hope that she may yet come to see her errors, and will return to the true path of our family. She may have the family sword._

_To my daughter, Kate, I leave my vengeance. She should be quite able to live on that, considering she’s managed to fritter away everything else I’ve been foolish enough to give to her.”_

* * *

“That tightfisted son of a bitch!” Kate snapped, rocketing to her feet.

Derek and the sheriff both moved towards her. Chris, on the other hand, dropped quickly back to stand by his daughter. As for Peter, he didn’t even look up, but merely moved on to the second page.

He did pause when Kate made a racket at the liquor cabinet at one end of the room. She rummaged through the bottles before settling on a decanter filled with some sort of amber liquid. When she uncapped it, the smell was strong enough to make Lydia, the furthest away, sniff violently. Kate turned around and glared, then took a long drink of the stuff.

She didn’t seem inclined to move from there, though Lydia’s mother looked to the sheriff as if she wished he and the others would find a reason to move her. The sheriff nodded tightly back, but held his ground, while Derek drifted towards his uncle, his hands in fists at his sides.

“‘On to my students,’” Peter said.

* * *

_“I have had the opportunity to see first-hand the new generations as they come through my school, and to test their mettle as their principal. I am generally unimpressed._

_However, a few individuals have from time to time caught my attention, and I would like to provide them with a small token of my feelings towards each._

_To Jackson Whittemore, the most cowardly, vain, silly little boy I have ever met, I leave my own trophies. Perhaps if he sees the accomplishments of a real man, he will finally understand the small, petty nature of his goals._

_To Lydia Martin, an exemplar of the empty-headed twits who are unfortunately left to mother our descendants, I leave my wife’s jewelry. At least she will air them out at events formal enough to merit them, instead of selling them off like my daughter or throwing them in the trash like my granddaughter._

_To Scott McCall, supposed suitor of said granddaughter, I leave the bullet in the upper right-hand drawer of my desk in the first-floor study. We have already discussed the intended use of this bullet._

_To ‘Stiles’ Stilinski, who I suppose would insist on a pseudonym even in a document such as this, which speaks enough to his nature that I needn’t list _our_ past history, I leave my library. May you receive precisely what you’re looking for, with its help._

_Lastly, although he is not a student, he is exactly the type of bungling, easily-deceived fool who should come last in such matters: to Derek Hale I leave the remainder of my estate, so that he can see what my family has made of itself in the ashes of his own.”_

* * *

Kate’s wild, raucous laugh drowned out Derek’s snarl, but it couldn’t keep them all from seeing the rage twisting his face. Especially since a lightning bolt filled the room with gruesomely stark light just then: they all seemed like cutout silhouettes for a second, curiously flat and cartoonish.

The lights went out. Someone gasped. Glass shattered.

The lights went back on. Kate was toasting them with a half-empty decanter, the top in splinters at her feet. “Well, well, well,” she said. “What do you know, Derek. You said I took away your family, well, looks like you’ve got _mine_.”

“I don’t want it. You can have your shitty family things, Kate.” Derek stalked towards the door, then paused with his hand on the knob. He looked over his shoulder. “Peter, what—are you kidding me? There’s no way we’re taking a single—”

“What kind of bullshit is this?” Jackson’s father was on his feet and shoving his face into Chris’, his arms waving wildly. He didn’t seem to notice that Chris was nearly breaking the back of the chair he was gripping. “We didn’t come here to be insulted—”

“Hey, everybody, just hold on and—” the sheriff started.

Kate laughed again. She held up the decanter, then tipped it back without lowering her arm and poured the rest directly into her mouth. When she was done, she threw the decanter at the floor. She barely missed a startled Allison, who half-climbed, half-kneed Scott in her hurry to get back; Scott winced in pain but did his best to haul them both out of the way.

Chris shoved Jackson’s father back and whirled on his sister. “Kate!” he snapped.

“What, Chris?” Kate said. She smiled, tilted her head, and then suddenly dipped forward.

Everyone backed up a step. Kate lifted her head. She blinked dazedly a few times, then reached up towards herself. Then her hand went down and out, catching at the nearest chair as she retched violently. Her right knee buckled. She retched again, then twisted around to stare up at her brother. Her face was red going on purple and her eyes were bulging, and a reddish trickle had started down from one nostril.

“You—” she coughed, spat out a mouthful of blood flecked with black and green “—oh, you _fuck_ —”

And then she collapsed. Her head banged the chair aside. It toppled over onto her legs, danced for a few seconds as they spasmed, and then fell over with a muffled thud. She flopped limply over and her face was purple going on black, with wide, staring eyes in the middle of it.

“Oh, my God,” Lydia breathed. She absently grunted as her mother, half-fainting, dragged on her arm.

“Oh, shit.” The sheriff dropped down to his knees next to Kate. He grabbed her head and shoulders and turned her onto her side, shaking her. Then he reached for her mouth.

“Don’t touch that!” Peter suddenly hissed. He was looking at Stiles, who’d knelt to peer at the little bit of liquid pooling amid the decanter shards, but when the sheriff looked at him, Peter shook his head firmly. “Or that. You don’t know what was in there, it might absorb through the skin.”

Chris sucked in his breath. He had stepped back towards Allison, but after a squeeze on her shoulder, he moved between her and the rest of the room. “You know much about that, Hale?”

Peter blinked twice, then smiled humorlessly. “Probably at least as much as you do, judging by her last words.”

“Dad?” Allison said softly. She looked up at her father, stricken but not surprised.

On the other hand, Chris rocked back as if he’d been slapped. “I—you think—she was my _sister_ ,” he said sharply. “What—”

“Goddamn it, everyone sit the hell down,” the sheriff snapped. He got up from Kate’s limp body and rubbed at the side of his face, then turned around. “Sit down and shut up. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GPS coordinates are real and are for Mt. Shasta, CA, which apparently has a lot of paranormal activity.


	2. Chapter 2

They were not going to call for help. The house’s phones had been disconnected a week ago; some pranking kids had broken in and called in a fake murder, and since they couldn’t afford to keep someone there all the time, it just seemed a better idea, explained a stiff, poker-faced Chris. It was too deep in the woods for cell phones to work, especially with what was shaping up to be a hell of a storm outside.

Jackson’s father wanted to just drive out; Lydia’s mother, chiming in, insisted that her daughter couldn’t possibly stay after such a shock. They both took offense, in great detail and for several minutes, at the notion that they might be murder suspects. The sheriff dourly held out against their threats and pleas until Jackson’s father raised something involving Stiles from school, and then he unbent enough to take the conversation into the hall.

He also insisted that Peter and Chris come out too, though neither was protesting the suspect label. Chris had clammed up completely after explaining the phone situation, while Peter had philosophically observed that the Fourth Amendment was only as good as the officers applying it. Derek hadn’t been specifically invited, but the sheriff’s stern look had gotten him as far as the doorway, where he was now posted with a bored expression on his face.

“And none of you touch anything,” the sheriff added. “Stiles.”

“Hands here,” Stiles said. He held them in the air till the sheriff had completely vanished into the hall, then promptly dropped them and went back to peering at Kate’s dead body.

The other teenagers had retreated to stand near the door. Jackson and Lydia had their phones out; the lack of reception apparently meant nothing if you had a selfie quota to fill. Allison was crying quietly into Scott’s shoulder.

“Stiles, seriously, can you just leave it?” Scott whispered. He winced when Allison shifted against him, then patted her back. “What are you looking at, anyway?”

“Oh, just wondering if she’s really dead.” Stiles got down on his hands and knees, carefully avoiding all of the blood and vomit, and turned his head sideways to look into Kate’s still-open eyes.

Derek had been watching the argument in the hall, but now he turned the other way. “What?”

“Dude, it’s a stormy night, we’re all in a creepy house, and somebody just died.” Stiles pulled out his keychain. He riffled through it till he got to a Swiss Army knife, then pried out the needle attachment. “ _Apparently_. Sue me for being genre-savvy.”

“What are you—Stiles, that’s Allison’s aunt!” Scott hissed. He glanced at Allison, who was starting to come out of her crying fit, then screwed up his face and let her go and went over to grab Stiles by the shoulder. “You can’t just—”

“Um, did.” Stiles turned around and smiled semi-apologetically to Allison. He had his hands behind his back. “So hey, I’m not being morbid or anything, I just kind of don’t want to die in a totally unbelievable yet incredibly horrible way just because I—”

Allison wiped the back of her hand across her nose and mouth. She was shaking a little where she leaned against the wall, but she didn’t seem angry. “Is she?”

“Huh?” Stiles blinked blankly. Then he glanced over his shoulder. “Oh. Oh! Yeah, so I’m not a coroner or anything, but she’s not bleeding like her heart is still going.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. It hasn’t been long enough for rigor mortis, and if her heartbeat’s slow enough, you can’t tell the difference,” Derek said. He looked absolutely uninterested in how they were staring at him.

Jackson sneered. “Well, that sounds like a murderer, doesn’t it?”

Derek snorted. He didn’t move but somehow he seemed to grow against the doorway, which _was_ the only way out of the room. And then he did, a quick step into the room that had Jackson jumping with a small yelp. Derek settled back, grinning wolfishly, and then the door banged shut behind him.

It actually caught the heel of his foot. He stumbled forward, then whipped around and pushed his forearm against it. Then he slammed his arm against the door, only to suck in a pained breath when the wood wouldn’t give. He moved back so the rest of them could see the knob jiggling violently.

“Stiles? Stiles!”

“Allison!” “Lydia!” “Jackson!”

“Oh, hell, no,” Stiles finally said. “And now we’re locked in? Seriously?”

* * *

They were locked in. The door was solid oak, so thick that it barely trembled when first Derek and then Chris and the sheriff tried their shoulders at it.

“I don’t have a key,” Chris said. His voice was so muffled that they were all pressed against the door to hear it, but the irritation in his voice was clear enough. “I didn’t even know this door locked. I don’t—I barely saw my father, all right? I don’t know what he did up here.”

“Derek?” Peter called. “Windows?”

“Plate-glass and iron bars, and the squares are too small,” Derek said, coming back to the door. “You’d have to rip out the bars to get out.”

“There’s a chimney,” Scott said.

Allison went white, while on the other side, her father’s voice strained like an overtensioned wire. “Don’t use the chimney,” Chris said. “It—look, God knows when it was last cleaned, and if you fall, you could break a neck. It goes up three stories.”

“We’re locked in a room with a dead body,” Stiles said. He twisted around to put his back against the door, ignoring Jackson’s complaints about getting kicked in the shins, and then stared thoughtfully at Jackson’s and Lydia’s knees. “Okay, so now somebody’s going to try to go out for help.”

“Shit,” the sheriff said. “All right. Somebody better drive into town and get some tools so we can dismantle the door.”

Stiles put his hand over his face. “Dad?” he called through it. “Dad, are you sure there’s not a chainsaw or an ax somewhere in the house? Where you could find it if you go in pairs and don’t get distracted by personal issues and get picked off by a serial killer?”

“I don’t think you’re helping,” Scott muttered.

“This room was the only one that wasn’t locked,” Peter called out. “Gerard left instructions about that.”

“Then why don’t you have a key?” Chris snapped. “You’re the executor.”

“I was the executor as of yesterday morning, when _your father’s_ messenger dropped those instructions and a key to the front door off at my office,” Peter said. “Before that, I admit Derek and Laura and I had a nice whiskey on the day of the funeral, but otherwise we stayed damn far away from your family.”

“We used to keep some tools out back in the shed,” Derek said. He wasn’t quite as baiting as Peter, but he didn’t seem worried about either Allison’s glare at him, or about Chris’ tone getting curter and curter. “Did he redo everything when he took our house?”

“Yes.” Chris sounded like he was rapidly coming around to murder, whatever his stance had been on it previously. “As far as I know. Look, we have to get them out of there.”

“I say the sheriff stays here and keeps a lookout while Nathalie and I drive into town,” Jackson’s father said. There was a pause, and then Jackson’s dad made a loud, incredulous noise. “They’re our children! Everyone knows the Hales and the Argents are just as psycho as each other, but we’re normal parents who are _coming back_ for our kids, so why you’re looking at me like that—”

Peter laughed. “And you _didn’t_ call me a conniving bastard for snaking old man Argent out from under you when you heard about the executorship.”

Jackson pushed back from the door, frowning. Then he noticed the rest of them looking at him. He sneered again and brazened it out till he got to Derek, where his expression got noticeably brittle.

“I—well, I handled all his other affairs,” Jackson’s father said. His voice was bobbling between anger and nerves. “I don’t understand why he’d go to a white-collar defense lawyer, even before the fact that it’s _you_.”

“I’m hardly at fault for the fact that your clients keep ending up paying me to fix your stupid business calls,” Peter said smoothly. “Why, in fact, sheriff, now that I’m thinking about motives, you might be interested to know that—”

“If you two don’t shut up, I’ll lock you both in the back of my patrol car and let you duke it out as to who’s the more heartless bastard,” the sheriff said. “Look, our kids are in there and we’re wasting time. We’ll all go. There’s that ranger station at the entrance to the preserve. They might not have anybody out for the storm, but the station has a phone and probably axes.”

“Lydia? Lydia, honey, are you going to be all right?” Lydia’s mother called. “Maybe I should stay. After all, I didn’t have any fight with anyone.”

Allison made a disbelieving noise. Scott grabbed her hand, but she ignored him. She stared at a scornful Lydia, then turned around and slapped her hand against the door. “Dad! Dad, don’t you dare leave her here. You remember what she and Mom—”

“Oh, seriously, Chris, I thought we made up on that,” Lydia’s mother said. Even through the door, her voice rang false.

“Well, I guess if you call telling my wife she’s lucky her father-in-law is the principal, because this is the only school district who’d hire her.” Chris’ voice drifted out of hearing, then came back strong and firm. “No. We’ll all go. We all came in with enough time to fiddle with that decanter. The kids couldn’t be involved, and much as I dislike your family, Peter, Derek did drive up last. But if he lays one finger on my daughter…”

Derek let out a snort that had more than a little in common with a snarl. “I don’t ever want to touch _another_ one of you again,” he called.

“Well, you heard him,” Peter said. 

There was some muffled conversation, most of it sounding angry. Jackson’s father shouted something about Jackson documenting any injuries, only to be shut up by someone else. Then someone knocked on the hall-side of the door. “Stiles?” the sheriff said. “Stiles, you know what to do.”

“Yeah, dad, got it,” Stiles said. “Keep the scene clear, keep everyone calm, keep ‘em all alive.”

“We’ll make it quick.” The sheriff knocked again, and then there came the sound of a mass of receding footsteps.

Everyone pressed against the door again. Even Derek, leaning against the wall to the side of the door, turned his head. They collectively twitched when the front door slammed shut. A couple minutes later, the sound of car engines came faintly over the howling wind.

“And how I’m supposed to do that with no gun, or any other weapon besides my trusty two-inch knife—” Stiles held up his keychain “—is up to my amazing wits, I guess.”

“Give me a break.” Derek pushed off the wall. He went over to the rows of chairs and picked one up—his glance at Kate’s body was quick and sharp and not at all going with his expressionless face—and then carried it over to one of the windows. He set it down to face the window, then made to sit in it. “We’re locked in. Nothing’s going to happen. You should be more worried about them, with the roads. Flash floods sometimes wipe them out.”

“Well, thank you so much, Derek, I wasn’t thinking about my father and a flaming fireball at all,” Stiles snapped, getting up. He grabbed at the door knob for balance and then slipped and fell back, flailing. “Hey! Hey, it turned!”

Scott grabbed it. “But it was locked—”

The door swung open.

* * *

Of course, the first thing everyone did was go for the front door, which was also unlocked. But when they got out to the porch, the cars were long gone. And the wind was really blasting the rain now, driving it so hard that the girls, with their bare legs, had to retreat back inside. The boys stuck it out a little longer, but nothing could be made out beyond the waving trees and the cracking lightning, so it was pointless to stay.

“Fuck,” Derek muttered. Denim wasn’t much better protection, but he lingered a few seconds longer than the rest. “Fuck. Where…”

“Hey, don’t go back in there.” Scott grabbed Stiles by the elbow, drawing him back from the room with Kate’s body. “We can wait out here. I know you’re—”

“Oh, shut it, Scott. I want to know that it’s not going to disappear.” Stiles shook off the other boy, but caught sight of Allison at the same time. He grimaced, then shrugged and just pushed the door open so they could see into it from the stairs, where the others were taking up seats. Then he started wandering up and down the hall, occasionally reaching out to rock a chair or a table. “Okay, here we go.”

He got hold of a massive chair, with arms as thick as a man’s thighs. It was made out of a black wood with an eerie lack of shine, like it soaked in light, and was plainly too heavy for Stiles, but he shoved and jerked and got it to move a few inches.

Derek closed the front door. He watched the proceedings for a few seconds, then rolled his eyes and went over. “Where are you trying to move it?”

“To the door! Jesus, it’s obvious. I mean, what if it pulls that crazy slam and lock again?” Stiles said.

“Then we’d be in the hall?” Derek said, but he was grabbing the chair. He grunted and jerked, and while he was sweating a little, he got it to prop open the door easily enough.

“And what if we don’t want to be here?” Stiles said. He gestured around them, then turned slowly around. His gesturing hand slowly dropped. “I mean…wow, shit, I wasn’t really looking before, but this is just…”

The wind died for a moment, so his voice fell into a well of silence. Without the storm’s screams, the house seemed strangely still. As if just like the black chair with light, it just sucked up all sound and made none itself. It was an old house, with old timbers, but as they stood and stared, there wasn’t a single creak.

“Your granddad collected some weird shit,” Jackson said. His voice fell flat, without an echo. He grimaced and edged sideways on the step he was sitting on with Lydia, but kept going. “What is that? Some kind of pickled monkey?”

He pointed at a large jar standing on a small table. It was filled with a weird yellow liquid, which seemed to glow faintly with its own light, and in the liquid floated a gnarled, brown body.

“It’s a Fiji mermaid,” Derek said. He leaned against the front door and faced the stairs. “It’s a fake they’d sell to visiting sailors. Stitch a monkey and a fish together, that’s what you get.”

“Why would your grandfather keep something like that around?” Jackson asked.

“I don’t _know_ ,” Allison snapped. She had been curled up against Scott with her arm around her shoulder, but now she twisted almost out from under that to glare up at Jackson. “Look, none of us want to be here, so can you just leave my family alone?”

Jackson rolled his eyes. “Well, I would’ve been happy to, Allison, but they’re the ones who bothered us.”

“Says the guy whose dad makes Peter Hale look respectable,” Scott muttered.

“What was that, McCall?” Jackson jerked away from Lydia and put both hands down on the step like he was going to get up. “You want to say that to my face?”

“Leave Allison alone, Jackson,” Lydia said. She was checking her eyebrows with her phone camera. “It’s not her fault that her entire family is filled with psychopaths.”

“Well, your mom got a little psycho herself, acting like her divorce gives her all the single men in school,” Allison snapped. She grinned at Lydia’s shocked face. “Oh, come on, like we don’t all know the only reason she was there that late was to get it on with Mr. Carson in the—”

“Wow, this degenerated quickly,” Stiles said. He looked at Derek, who raised his brows and then recrossed his arms more firmly over his chest, clearly just satisfied to watch.

“—and your mom was there snooping around because she and your grandfather liked terrorizing innocent kids! I bet they _tossed_ her out of her last school for traumatizing the boys,” Lydia said, her eyes flaring hot. “I bet she got caught with some kid in her room—”

“You take that back!” Allison screamed. She lunged, and only the fact that she hit Scott’s shoulder kept her from getting hold of Lydia.

Scott grabbed Allison’s waist and dragged her back, while Lydia, laughing nastily, scooted up a few steps with Jackson smirking right beside her. Allison was still screaming, her hands clawing at Lydia’s shoes. She even fought with Scott, trying to elbow his head out of the way.

“Get your girlfriend under control, McCall,” Jackson scoffed. He stood up and went up another step, dodging one of Allison’s wild swings, and then waved his hand dismissively at them. He glanced up at the second floor, then started up the steps.

“Uh, Jackson?” Stiles came up to the end of the staircase. “Hey, so normally, I wouldn’t give a damn about your well-being, but seeing as we’ve already got one dead body and—”

“I’m not a Hale or an Argent, and we’re not in a movie, Stilinski,” Jackson said. “The plumbing here still works, right? Because all this bullshit drama is making me thirsty. There’s a door open and I think it’s a bathroom.”

Stiles grabbed at his head, then swore and pushed past Scott and Allison. He stumbled over Allison’s arm, muttered an apology and got up to find his head right at Lydia’s knees. She raised an eyebrow and he hastily yanked his eyes away from the hem of her skirt, then gritted his teeth and grabbed for the rail.

“You wanna give me a hand here?” he said to Lydia. “You know, keep your jock trophy intact?”

“He’s just looking for the bathroom, Stiles,” she said. “What do you think’s going to happen?”

Stiles paused. Then he looked up. He was just in time to see Jackson disappear into a room, with the door swinging abruptly shut behind him. “Well, that,” he said, scrambling upwards. “Shit! Shit, Scott, give me a hand—”

The door swung back open. Jackson backed out, white-faced and pointing a shaking finger at something. Then he jerked like it’d made for him. He let out a hoarse, terrified noise and turned and ran right into the stair railing. Which gave way. Before anybody could do anything, he was on the first floor, sprawled out, his neck at an impossible angle and his eyes still open and terrified.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fiji mermaids are a real hoax, and are creepy as hell, if you've ever seen one up close.


	3. Chapter 3

“Oh, fuck,” Stiles said again, dully. He was sitting on the bottom step and staring at Jackson’s head just a few inches away. “Oh, fuck.”

“Oh, my God,” Allison whispered. She was sitting next to Stiles, arms tightly clasped around herself. She shivered, then started and looked up.

Scott smiled nervously. “Er, sorry, just thought it might help.” 

He began to lower his jacket, but Allison reached out and stopped him with a hand on his wrist. She smiled uncertainly, then took the jacket and draped it over her shoulders.

Lydia looked up from where she and Derek were crouched by Jackson’s body. Her face was streaked with tears and mascara, and at first it looked as if she were going to burst into more tears, but then she put back her shoulders. Her lip curled. “Well, that’s just perfect,” she said harshly. “The lovebirds, all cozy while _Jackson_ is dead. My God, you’re disgusting.”

“Hey,” Scott said, frowning. “Hey, I know you’re upset but—”

“I’m upset? _I’m_ upset?” Lydia got to her feet, her hands clenched into fists. “I just saw my boyfriend die, Scott! We all did, and your goddamn idea is to say that _I’m upset_? Well, you selfish little shit, I’m—”

“Let’s see what scared him,” Derek interrupted.

He stepped over Jackson’s legs and went up to the stairs. Paused, then opted to squeeze between Stiles and the stairs instead of bothering with Allison, who was starting to shake again. Stiles was still staring at Jackson’s head and let himself be rocked without a sound, but as Derek continued up the stairs, he snapped out of it. He jerked around, then got to his feet.

“Hey! Hey, wait!” Stiles hurried after the other man till he could grab onto the back of Derek’s coat. “Hey, wait, we don’t know what the hell it could be and we’re unarmed.”

Derek didn’t reply, but once he reached the top of the stairs, he swerved off a few feet to where a full suit of armor was standing. He took its sword and then headed down the hall. Stiles looked after him, mouth open, and then made a frustrated noise and followed.

“Do you even know how to use that?” Stiles said.

They were almost at the door, which was still standing open, blocking their view of the space behind it. Derek looked down at the sword. “I’m guessing that if someone or something jumps out, I hit it with the pointy end.”

“No, Jesus, you _stab_. No, wait! Wait, just—” Stiles looked around, then grabbed at a stuffed pheasant sitting on a nearby table. He nearly dropped it as the tail feathers pulled out.

Cursing, he juggled it till he got hold of the base it was mounted on. He edged up next to Derek, who looked reluctantly, if contemptuously, curious, and then stretched around Derek to stick the pheasant’s head just past the edge of the door.

“Use the mirror.” Lydia came down the hall, wiping mascara off her cheeks. She was trembling, but her jaw and shoulders were stiff and determined.

“What—oh.” Stiles lowered the pheasant and watched with Derek as Lydia grabbed a free-standing mirror and twisted it so it reflected the area beyond the door. “Oh, good move.”

Lydia glanced at him, then shivered. She sucked in a deep, uneven breath, and then looked at the reflection in the mirror. The dim outlines of the room behind the door—it was small, with an odd texture on the far wall—were visible, but not much beyond that; the lights were only working in the downstairs.

“Hang on,” Stiles said. He dug into his pocket, then pulled out his phone and lit up the screen. Then he held it out.

A flare of lightning from outside burst into the dark hall, touching off all sorts of crazy glares and menacing silhouettes. Stiles yelled and fell back behind Derek, while Lydia let out a failing scream and nearly collapsed into the opposite wall. 

Derek squinted, idly swinging the sword, and then, when it was dark again, started forward. “I saw, there’s nothing in there,” he said when Stiles reached for him. He went around the door and poked his head into the room, then pulled out his own phone and held it up. “I don’t— _fuck_.”

He jerked back. His elbow knocked against door and he twisted and then cursed as the sword-tip stuck in the wood. Derek yanked it out in a slashing motion that cut across the doorway, then halted where he was. He was breathing a little harder than normal, but other than that, he seemed to have gotten over the surprise.

“It’s some kind of trick,” he finally said.

“What?” Stiles said.

“I want to see,” Lydia said. She pushed forward, her own phone lit up and high above her head.

The room was a small powder room, with a sink and a weird wall-hanging made of what looked like crumpled rags. It had a big mirror over the sink, which at first only showed the usual reflection, but then—

“Shit!” Stiles yelped. He stumbled back and hit something solid. Something which grabbed his elbows, squeezed till they creaked, and then released him to groan and frantically check that his arms were still attached. He glared at Derek, then turned back to the mirror. “Shit, that looked real.”

“It is. Sort of.” Lydia took another deep breath, then put her phone down on the sink. She pushed right up and started feeling around the edges till she got her fingertips under it, and then she pulled it off the wall.

It was plainly heavier than she had expected, and she would’ve fallen back in a crash of razor-sharp shards if Derek hadn’t stepped up to seize the other side of the glass. They lowered it to the ground and then looked into the deep hollow behind the fake mirror.

“Pepper’s ghost,” Lydia whispered. She stared at the room on the other side of the hole, then abruptly spun on her heel.

Lydia yanked down the wall-hanging to reveal a door, which she jerked open so roughly that if it’d been locked, it might very well have opened anyway. She stormed through it, then appeared on the other side of the hole, holding a rubber mask. Up close it looked like no one in particular, with a generic oval shape and simple holes for the eye, nose and mouth, but it had patches of coarse black hair to mark out a deep vee of a hairline on the forehead, more patches just before the ears, and a fringe along the jaw. Then she held up a set of yellowed, gruesome fangs which clearly were intended to fit in the mouth hole. The teeth had been smeared with fake blood.

“Pepper’s ghost,” Lydia said more strongly. “It’s a trick, all right. A stupid, cheap little trick, making you look like you’re turning into a monster, and then that thing on the track, it makes it look like your reflection’s going to lunge at you, and—and it _killed_ him.”

She threw the mask and the fangs out of the hole, then disappeared. A second later she barged through the side door, through the room, and back into the hall. Stiles reached for her and she angrily shook him off.

“A stupid fucking prank!” she yelled. She was crying again, but not out of sadness. “A prank!”

“Lydia.” Stiles slowly raised his hands, then lifted his foot to step towards her. When she hissed at him, he flinched and went sideways instead, towards the stairs. He kept facing her. “Lydia, hey, listen, this is—this is fucked up, I totally agree with you, but let’s just sit down for a second. I mean, who the hell would even know what Pepper’s ghost is?”

“You,” Lydia said, but she sounded almost absent. “You would, you have all those weird books falling out of your bag, but you like me. You wouldn’t do it when I’m around, you couldn’t be sure that just Jackson would go down here.”

Derek still had the sword, and as she turned to him, he lifted it as if he were ready to use it on her. “I didn’t even know him,” he said.

“No, you didn’t,” Lydia agreed, and kept turning. She stared at Scott and Allison, who’d come up to the top of the stairs. “You, you don’t have the brains or the guts, not if Stiles isn’t involved.”

To Scott, who looked pleadingly at Stiles. “Lydia,” Stiles said again. He tried to sidle up to her, and this time got almost within touching distance before she whirled on him. “Hey, why don’t we—”

“Go back downstairs?” Lydia said. Her voice rose shrilly. “With her? Are you kidding me? First her own aunt, and now Jackson.”

“Wait, what?” Allison smiled the grimacing smile of the completely baffled. She pointed at her own chest, then grabbed at Scott’s shoulder with her other hand. “Me? You think I set up—I killed them?”

“It’s your grandfather’s house,” Lydia snapped. “Your grandfather, and I _know_ you were visiting him near the end, I know because I heard Jackson’s dad complaining about it. Have a client for years and years, then get jilted when even the estranged granddaughter can get in, that’s what he said.”

“Because he made me come!” Allison said. She was starting to cry herself, though her grip on Scott’s shoulder seemed more about keeping her from throwing herself forward than keeping her on her feet. “Not that it’s any of your business, but he made me come. He threatened my dad, and—and I didn’t set up whatever Pepper’s ghost is. I don’t know what it is! I’ve never heard of it.”

Lydia snorted. “Oh, you have too. You have, you little fake. Remember, Harris made us partner up on optics week and I made _damn_ sure you paid attention to that lesson. He just didn’t call it Pepper’s ghost, but I know you know how to set up mirrors. You killed him, you bitch. You killed Jackson!”

“I didn’t kill him!” Allison half-screamed back. “I didn’t kill him, I didn’t kill my aunt—I didn’t kill _anybody_. If you had any idea what people have tried to make me—”

“Allison wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Scott insisted. He hugged her around the waist, then glared at Lydia over her head. “She didn’t kill Jackson, and she definitely didn’t kill her aunt. Kate was her favorite aunt.”

“Her only aunt,” Derek muttered. He lowered the sword to lean the tip against the floor. “Besides, they didn’t seem that friendly earlier.”

“Because I found out what she’d done and I didn’t agree,” Allison half-sobbed, half-snarled. She twisted in Scott’s arms and gave Derek a vicious look. “I’m not like that, I’m not like either of you.”

Derek snorted. “You know, last I checked, there’s only one family who killed children around here. And you can’t even pretend now. Your grandfather admitted it—”

“She wasn’t even here when that happened,” Scott said sharply. “She and her dad were up in Washington, and they had no idea.”

“Sure. Sure, they didn’t,” Derek scoffed. He prodded the carpet a few times with the sword, then hiked it up under one arm and turned towards the stairs. “I’m sure they never discussed it when they were busy trying to make it look like _we_ were the ones who killed our own family. When somebody hit my sister with a semi right after she came back from college, trying to figure out what’d happened. When I was dealing with her and Peter in the hospital and your grandfather got our land foreclosed on and put up for auction. I’m sure you never, ever talked about any of that.”

“I had nothing to do with that!” Allison shouted. “I didn’t want—my dad didn’t want—but _you_ try and stop my grandfather. Oh, wait, you didn’t, did you?”

“Who cares about your damn families?” Lydia said. She breathed in sharply when both Derek and Allison turned on her, but lifted her chin high and met them squarely. “Really, who cares? The only ones who do are you, and you’re so wrapped up in your bullshit that you’ve completely forgotten the rest of us are here.”

Then she stalked forward. She went past Derek without a glance, even though the hallway was so narrow her skirt whispered over the sword in his hand, and then shouldered her way through Scott and Allison. Then she went down the stairs so that even with the house’s odd muffling effect, they heard every footstep.

“Lydia, wait.” Stiles rushed after her. He paused at the stairs to share a quick look with Scott, then hurried down the steps. “Wait, wait, I know you don’t want company right now but—”

“—we should stick together so we don’t get killed.” Lydia sounded fed up with the world, but she pulled up short and waited for him. She snorted when Stiles smiled nervously at her. “Think outside the movie box, Stiles. We shouldn’t just do that, we should find a room that we can tell doesn’t have secret mirrors or anything like that, and then we should sit there with that sword and whatever other blunt heavy things we can dig up.”

Derek eyed Allison, who shrank but who didn’t move. Then he looked at Scott, who had his arm across Allison’s belly. He rolled his eyes and pushed past Scott to join the other two. “Makes sense. Place isn’t as locked down as Peter thought, so—”

“Or it was, but whoever set this shit up has trick door locks. So we’d better barricade ourselves in, too,” Stiles said. Then he jerked. He swore and ran down the steps, nearly tripped over Jackson’s body, and then skidded half-way through the doorway of the first-floor room. “Oh, thank God. She’s still where we left her.”

“Look, I just—I don’t want to fight, all right?” Allison said. She went down a step, then glanced over. When she saw Scott at her side, she smiled for a second. Then she took a deep breath and they both faced the others.

“Let’s just find a room, and wait for the others to get back,” Scott said.

By then Derek and Lydia had reached the bottom of the stairs. Derek peered down the hall, then pointed with his sword. “Kitchen. Should have knives for everybody, plus the road wraps around so we can still see when someone drives up.”

“How do _you_ know where it is?” Scott asked.

Derek leveled a long, flat stare at him. “I used to live here,” he said. His lips pulled back from his teeth. “He changed up the inside, but the layout’s still the same.”

“Scott,” Allison said quietly. “Just…”

“Okay, okay.” Scott had switched to looking at the sword in Derek’s hand. “Is that the only sword you’ve got around?”

Before Allison could answer, Stiles popped out of the room. He blinked when everyone either started, yelped, or swung a heavy pointed piece of steel at him. Then he held up a fistful of fireplace pokers. “Ahem,” he said. “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry I missed these before too.”

“Let’s get Jackson out of the hall before we go,” Lydia said. When Stiles opened his mouth, she glared at him. “We all _saw_ what happened, we can give a statement when the cops show up. But I don’t want to just leave him out here. We can put him in there with Kate, and then block the door. Okay?”

“Well, ok—wait. If we all have pokers now, why can’t we just wait in here?” Stiles said. He pointed to the room behind him.

Derek and Allison both shook their heads, with almost identical looks on their faces. Then they looked warily at each other.

“It’s got one door, which doesn’t go outside,” Derek finally said. “And you can’t get out the windows, remember? Forget the damn crime scene. We worry about lasting this out, and then about the evidence.”

“And that brings me to another point,” Stiles said. “Maybe we should just go out—”

Thunder crashed overhead, so loudly that more than one person ducked and then looked up for the falling ceiling. Then it grumbled off, only to be overtaken by the softer, but much more methodical, pound of the rain.

“Flash floods,” Derek said. “We’re on the highest point for a couple miles around. Any direction we go, we’ll be heading into a flood area.”

Stiles raised the pokers again, then sighed. “Okay, no, I’m out. Just wanted to make sure we’re _intentionally_ walking into this, is all.”

Lydia marched over to him and then paused. She lifted her hand, as if she was going to touch his chest, and then snatched a poker when he froze.

“Shut up and help me with Jackson,” she said, sticking the poker under her arm.

* * *

After they dragged Jackson into the room, Derek and Scott and Stiles pushed a couple pieces of furniture in front of the door. Scott also had the bright idea to draw some arrows on the carpet with the soot from the fireplace, in case they somehow missed seeing the returning cars.

The storm had died down to rain and the occasional rattling breeze, but as they crept through the narrow, oddly-angled halls, the wind rose again to send weird moans and shrieks through the house. “It sounds like the rain’s coming straight down on top of us,” Scott said.

“It’s the chimneys,” Allison whispered. “It’s some kind of pipe system, it drains off the rain and spreads it around.”

She shivered, then wrapped her free arm around her waist. Scott frowned and tugged at his jacket so it sat higher on her shoulders, then began turning up the collar wings. When she glanced at him, he smiled hopefully. “Better?”

“Hey, lovebirds.” Derek stood at the end of the hall, the sword braced against a door. “Want to hurry it up?”

“Maybe we should just leave them. If they want to make out so badly, they can take their chances,” Lydia said bitterly. She was shivering as well, but any attempt by Stiles to take off his suit-coat was met by a blazing, derisive stare.

“Hey, would you just…” Scott let go of Allison’s hand and put his arm around his waist, easing her up the hall. He held their poker—they were sharing, as there weren’t enough—with the same arm, and as they walked, the end of it swung into the wall.

Allison jumped and let out a faint scream, then gulped air as Scott sheepishly switched the poker to his other hand.

“Just what?” Lydia said. “Just watch you two act as if this is all nothing? As if it’s just some silly little date?”

“Hey, look, I hate—really, really hate—stepping into this, but can I just raise something?” Stiles said. He prodded the door he and Derek had been looking at, then nervously drew back as it moved a little in the frame. “Peter said everything but that one room was locked when he came, right?”

“Even if he wanted to lie, which I can’t see a reason for, he didn’t get here that early,” Derek said sharply. “He called me from his office right before he drove over. There’s no way he got here more than a couple minutes before you and your dad.”

Stiles lifted his hands, then chuckled uneasily as his poker nearly swung into Derek’s neck. He yanked it down and squeezed the handle between his elbow and his side, and put his hands back up. “Not saying that, all right? Give me a chance to—what I’m saying is, clearly somebody around here can fuck with the locks at will, and that somebody’s left the kitchen unlocked now? Can you say herded?”

“He’s right.” Lydia crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the door, chewing her lip. “It is suspicious.”

“I already said why we can’t stay up front,” Derek said. He looked around at them, then made a disgusted, huffing sound and shoved open the door.

Before the rest of them could truly register it, he’d gone through the doorway and was well into the room. Stiles hissed, glanced at Scott, and then heaved his shoulders a couple times. He took a deep breath, a little hop in place, and then charged after Derek.

“Don’t hit me with the poker,” Derek said. He didn’t look back, but he made a knowing noise when Stiles belatedly lowered said poker.

The kitchen seemed abnormally large. In truth it wasn’t of a truly unusual size, but its lack of furniture, or any sort of dividers, and its rough, brutal timbers made the far wall seem acres away. The walls didn’t help: they were made out of massive stones on three sides, with a true monster of a fireplace set into the left wall that could easily have held several people. The wall opposite it was made of the same forbidding stonework, but was pierced at irregular intervals with a single door at the opposite end and a handful of inadequately-sized windows.

“No bars.” Derek walked up to one and felt around the frame, then found the latch. He snapped it back and pushed up the sash. It was stiff and resisted him with a series of increasingly higher-pitched groans.

The wind screeched through the small crack. It whipped rain across Derek’s belly, hard enough for him to take a step back. He frowned and pushed his hand over his shirt, then jerked his head up, seeing something outside. He raised the sword, then swore and dropped it and rammed up the sash with both hands. As soon as it was high enough, Derek ducked his head through and then got his knee up on the sill.

“What—” Lydia started. She’d rushed up to Stiles’ side and was gripping her poker before her like a baseball bat.

“There’s someone on the porch,” Derek called back. He was barely audible over the sudden roar of the wind. “They just—”

The gunshot cracked as if right over their heads. They all dropped, throwing up their hands against falling debris; Allison could be heard to sob as she fell into the wall. Stiles lost his poker and he cursed, skittering forward on his hands and knees to grab it again. Then he twisted around with the poker up. “Derek! Derek, what is it? Who is it?”

Derek was still halfway through the window, as if trying to crawl through and down onto the porch. But he didn’t react to their questions, or to the lash of rain across his increasingly drenched back.

“Oh, oh, _shit_ ,” Stiles abruptly said. He was white-faced and jittery, so much so that he could barely hold onto his poker. Then he swore and lunged forward. He grabbed Derek by the belt and hauled him back.

Blood washed over the floor. Stiles hissed and jerked away from Derek, letting him flop bonelessly to the stones. A giant hole pierced either side of Derek’s throat, still leaking pink dribbles, while Derek’s eyes stared blindly at the ceiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, just to be clear, Laura came back right after the fire and got smashed by a semi, and ended up in the hospital with Peter instead of taking Derek and running. The show is uneven about how fast werewolf healing works (in season one, for example, beta!Derek repeatedly shakes off attacks that have to have involved major cardiac damage, if not complete heart failure), but I'm assuming that really massive blunt force trauma, like a shattered pelvis or spinal column, is going to be at least as difficult to heal as Peter's burns.
> 
> Pepper's ghost is a real thing. It's Victorian-era special effects stuff.


	4. Chapter 4

“Oh, no.” Scott came up beside the still-stunned Stiles, then edged past him to Derek’s body. He pulled Derek further from the window, then bent over the other man, feeling for a pulse around the gaping holes.

“Someone’s coming in!” Lydia hissed. She had sank to her knees, but got up quickly, absently swearing as her skirt hiked up. She looked around, then rushed over to a knife block and yanked out the nearest knife.

It was long as her forearm and shone hypnotically in each flash of lighting. The gleam seemed to cast a spell on Stiles and Scott, since neither of them moved as Lydia, shaking but grim-faced, hurried up to take a position next to the back door. She flattened herself against the wall, poker and knife clutched in either hand.

Someone _was_ coming. They could hear the footsteps in between the rumbles of thunder. A heavy, uneven tread, but quick, as if whoever it was, they were moving in sprints. The steps came along the outside of the kitchen towards the still-open window; Stiles and Scott finally stirred, scrambling to plaster themselves under the sill so they wouldn’t be seen.

The steps stopped by the window. Scott pushed his hand over his mouth, then searched frantically with his eyes for Allison. He relaxed when he finally found her crouching just inside the hall door, in his sight but not in the sight of anyone looking in from outside.

Then he stiffened again. Stiles had poked him. He looked over and Stiles gestured silently to the pokers they held, then to the window. Scott’s fingers pushed harder against his face, so the flesh under them whitened, and then he nodded curtly. Stiles offered him a brittle smile. Then, watching each other, they started to pivot towards the window.

The steps abruptly moved on. They came towards the back door at a slower, dragging pace. Stiles pantomimed a sharp curse, then caught Lydia’s eye. Lydia looked terrified, but she drew herself up tightly as the footsteps neared her.

With another silent curse, Stiles slung the poker over his shoulder. He crawled awkwardly to her, limited to one arm and his knees, and then got up on the other side of the door just as the knob twisted. They all bit down on gasps.

The knob caught, then turned all the way around. Someone outside sighed and then grunted, thudding against the door. They jerked at the knob, then thudded against it again and the door finally began to swing. A gun came in, followed by the hand and arm holding it. Lydia chewed at her lip and it started to bleed, unnoticed by her.

Whoever it was sensed something amiss. They started to jerk around and Stiles shouted, slamming into the door so it nearly shut on the arm. The other person shouted back and across the room, Allison gasped, leaping to her feet.

Lydia was already in action. She hacked downward with her knife at the protruding arm, then let go of the knife and grabbed the gun, desperately twisting it away from the other person. With her other hand, she struck out with the poker, catching some part of the body still outside.

“Wait, wait!” Allison screamed. She ran across the room, then nearly drove the wind out of herself, hitting Scott’s arm. He pulled her back and she hit his shoulder, then twisted nearly free. “Wait, it’s my—”

Stiles yanked open the door, then swung around it, his poker held high and ready. A body fell through the doorway at his and Lydia’s feet, half-curled and groaning. Its top half was unnaturally pale and its bottom half was stark black, like some kind of hellish chimera. Then it raised its head, water streaming off a bruised face, and they recognized him.

“It’s my dad,” Allison whispered.

* * *

Chris Argent looked like a wreck. He didn’t have his suit-coat or tie anymore, and his white dress shirt was a sodden rag, with a cuff torn nearly to the elbow and a couple long rents in the back, as if he’d crawled through a jagged hole at some point. He cradled his arm, which was still bleeding sluggishly from Lydia’s knife, and his knee, which even through the wrenched folds of his dress slacks looked badly swollen.

“I told you,” he said roughly. He tried to sit up against the jamb, then grimaced and slumped back, turning over on his side. “I didn’t see who it was. It just looked like someone was coming at me, and—”

“Well, who else would be here? For all you know, it could’ve been one of us,” Lydia snapped. She had her poker raised over him and his gun aimed squarely at his head. Then she looked up and glared at Allison. “Scott, I swear to God, if she doesn’t shut up—”

“He’s bleeding,” Allison said desperately. She was still looking a little dazed; she tried to pry her arm from Scott again, but he held her firmly, if apologetically. “Please, he’s going to bleed out. At least let me bandage it.”

“He’s not going to bleed out from that,” Stiles scoffed. His eyes were unnaturally bright and he spoke in a rapid staccato. “Believe me, I know. And hey, you know, he just _shot_ someone in front of us. Let’s just check what the hell else he’s been doing before we let him in, all right?”

Chris had been staring, not at his daughter but at Scott, but as Stiles’ poker moved, his attention snapped back to the two teenagers standing over him. “There’s something in the woods,” he said abruptly. “It was—something was chasing us, all right? And Derek didn’t look like you think.”

“And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” Lydia said.

“What do you mean, ‘us’?” Stiles said at the same time.

“Peter and I,” Chris said slowly. A blast of wind hammered the rain through the door and over him, and he shivered, then hissed and clutched his injured arm more tightly to his chest. “Your dad—” he nodded to Stiles “—took David and Nathalie, made Peter drive me in David’s car. Something about keeping the peace.”

Lydia nodded, then flicked a contemptuous look at Allison. “Like the whole town doesn’t know about the gun show in your dad’s glove compartment,” she said. “Or that he and Peter Hale have been—”

“We left the Hales _alone_ ,” Chris hissed. He tensed when Lydia hefted her poker, then flinched as Allison sobbed. “Look, whatever he was thinking, Whittemore’s Porsche wasn’t meant to handle water on the road. The patrol car got through fine, but the Porsche skidded off.”

“Where’s Peter?” Stiles said sharply. He took a sudden step forward. “Did you just leave him, you asshole?”

Chris looked steadily at Stiles. Whatever he found, it annoyed but didn’t surprise him; Stiles flushed and then abruptly jabbed his poker into Chris’ knee, making the man cry out and double over. 

“You’re hurt—Scott! Scott, stop them!” Allison wrenched at Scott’s grip, only to choke when he wrenched her back. She stared at him. “You’re hurting me.”

“I know, I’m sorry, but—” Scott’s jaw worked, then set as he turned back to the door. “Just hang on, we’ll explain in a second.”

“I didn’t leave him,” Chris said. He was studying Scott now. “His head bashed the steering wheel pretty badly before the airbag inflated all the way, and he had some broken ribs, maybe internal bleeding. I pulled him out and made for the house since that’s closer. Carried him as far as I could, but my knee was hurt and it’s steep going here.”

Stiles snorted and dangled the poker near Chris’ knee. “You said something was chasing you.”

“Yeah, well, something was. We kept seeing things in peripheral vision and Peter kept—” Chris cut himself off. He shifted so his weight was on his hip and off his knee. “He shoved me off and ran. I was almost here, figured I’d come see if I could get help.”

“Like hell,” Stiles snapped. “He ran, with a concussion and broken ribs and whatever else? He didn’t, you just left him!”

Chris stared at him, then shook his head. “You can’t be this stupid, St—”

Stiles smashed the poker against Chris’ knee. Chris let off a hoarse shout, crumpling over so his face pressed into the floor.

“Stop!” Allison screamed. She pushed at Scott, then abruptly twisted around and slapped him.

He let her go. They both looked shocked as they stumbled apart. Allison clutched her hands to her chest, her fingers grasping at nothing. Then she sucked in a breath and spun around, only for Scott to grab her up by the waist and sling her backwards. She almost collided with the wall and caught herself just in time with her arm. Then she twisted back to stare at him, and at Stiles and Lydia.

“Why are you doing this?” she pleaded. “What’s going on? Scott—”

“They killed my mom,” Stiles said. He idly tapped the poker against the floor, looking between Allison and Chris. “Gerard Argent doesn’t believe in modern medicine, apparently. Thought she was possessed by something evil and he got somebody to come in and shoot an air bubble into her IV. And I saw them, Allison. I saw them—I was just a kid and nobody believed me. Everyone thought I was just making up shit about the Angel of Death. Well, till I ran across Laura and Peter’s room in the hospital. Of course, that’s because your family’s been trying to murder the Hales for years, and nobody believes them either, but hey, murderees got to stick together.”

Allison’s mouth worked soundlessly. She stared at her dad, who looked just as blank. Then he grimaced, his lips moving around a silent curse; she must have recognized the habit because she moaned, her hands going up and back to drag at her hair. “But that was _him_ ,” she said tearfully. “Him. It’s always him. We didn’t do it. Stiles, I swear to God, my dad didn’t—”

“But he killed my mom,” Scott said. He swallowed hard when she looked at him, but his gaze was steady. “She found something, Allison. All these years later—she found out something that’d help prove Stiles’ mom was killed, and—”

“It was a drunk driver,” Allison whispered. Her eyes seemed about to dissolve at any moment. “There was film—”

“Doctored,” Stiles said. “Wrong car. But there was a homeless guy hiding in a bunch of trash bags, and he saw it and he saw your dad’s SUV.”

“Did he see me driving it?” Chris suddenly demanded. “Did he? Scott, I didn’t kill your mother. It might have been my car, but it wasn’t me.”

Scott still looked uneasy. His hand was twisting back and forth on his poker, but when Allison stretched her hand towards him, he shook himself. “But you didn’t notice the blood on the front?” he said softly, almost to himself. “Her head was smashed, Mr. Argent. We had to have a closed-casket funeral. How do you miss something like that?”

Chris sucked in his breath. He pushed himself up against the jamb, staring at them. Didn’t say a word.

“He’s my _dad_.” Allison took a step forward, then shook her head savagely. “I’m sorry, Scott, I can’t—”

She dropped like a rock. Scott swore and dove forward, going off his feet to catch her in time. He felt over her head, then checked her pulse, and then slumped with relief.

Lydia lowered her poker, then spun around to point the gun at Chris, who’d jerked up with a bitten-off cry. Then looked over her shoulder to raise a brow at Scott. “Well, what, did you want to keep listening to her?” she said. She watched Scott cradle the unconscious girl for a few seconds, then looked at Stiles. “This is a set-up?”

“Not all of it. Somebody else is fucking around too,” Stiles said slowly. “I swear, I had no idea about the Pepper’s ghost thing upstairs. We just wanted to get Kate and get him to talk about my mom and Scott’s mom.”

“I’ll talk,” Chris said. He was staring at Allison’s lolling head. “I don’t know—I told you, I didn’t know about any of this, but I’ll talk about whatever else you want to know about my father and my sister. Just—please, she really had no idea. Please leave her out of this.”

“We will,” Scott said. He shifted Allison’s head so it was more securely against his shoulder, then glared at Lydia. His voice dropped almost to a growl and he looked so murderous that Stiles seemed briefly taken aback. “Nobody’s touching her but me.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “As if she’s done anything but scream her head off, McCall. I’m not worried about her. I don’t know about the rest of this, but I agree, _you’re_ lying about something.” She looked at Chris, then back at a now-grinning Stiles. “I’m not siding with you either. But I’m damn well getting to the bottom of this and I’m tired of standing here with the wind in my face.” 

* * *

Scott found some rope in one of the drawers. He also found a roll of bandages, and while Stiles and Lydia agreed that the cut on Chris’ arm hadn’t caught any major blood vessels, it did keep bleeding whenever Chris moved or was moved. Stiles clearly didn’t like it, but he let Scott wrap up Chris’ arm. Then they tied Chris’ wrists together, looped the other end of the rope through one of the heavy iron rings dotted around the fireplace, and knotted that around his ankles.

He could sit up if he wanted, with the hearthstone as a seat and the wall next to the fireplace at his back, but he choose to lie on his side. His knee was so swollen that he’d gone through the painstaking effort of ripping open his pant-leg with one hand, giving it more room.

“I don’t know what else to tell you,” he said tiredly. “The car slid off the road. It hit a tree. I pulled Peter out, and we decided it was better to head for the house.”

“Well, how come you were so far back the others didn’t notice?” Stiles said. He was pacing back and forth before the back door, occasionally peering out the small pane of glass set in the center.

Chris raised his head, then bit down on a grunt of pain as a shudder went through his body. He absently rubbed his hand over his neck, where the skin was visibly bumpy with cold. “Peter was driving, remember? Something ran by the car. Peter stopped, tried to see what it was, and by the time we started again, the others had gone on ahead. You can see what it’s like outside, it’s not that surprising they didn’t see.”

Stiles turned like he was going to strike out with the poker again, then stopped. He scowled at Scott, who had just sat down next to Chris.

“He’s going to pass out from hypothermia,” Scott said. He and Stiles stared at each other, until Stiles huffed and jerked away, and then he reached over and pulled something in the fireplace.

Chris had gone stiff as soon as Scott had turned towards the fireplace. He started to say something, then hissed and jerked his knees into his chest, barely getting his feet clear of the flames leaping to life. He kept crawling, his face white with pain, until he’d dragged himself off the hearthstone and onto the floor, at the limit of his tether and as far from the fire as he could get.

“You should warm up,” Scott said. He waved at the gas burners. “If you do pass out, we’re just going to wake you up again.”

“You’re being really nice, for somebody who thinks the guy killed his mom,” Lydia said.

“If he’s unconscious he can’t talk,” Stiles snapped. He jiggled his poker with increasing agitation, then suddenly stuck the tip between two stones. He ignored the loud ringing noise that result and glanced over at Chris, then frowned. “What are you looking at?”

Chris started, then looked away from Scott and up at Stiles. Then he twisted around and looked at Derek’s body; Scott had shut the window and dragged Derek to near the inside wall, only a little away from where Allison still laid unconscious. He was breathing heavily, and when Scott put his poker down, he jumped again. Then he stared at Scott again.

“I didn’t kill your mother,” he said slowly. He watched Scott like he was waiting for something. “I don’t know who told you that.”

“Nobody _told_ you, we found out,” Stiles said. “God, want to listen to us for once? We asked that homeless guy and he IDed your car, even with the license plate. And then he turned up dead.”

“What?” Lydia said. She was sitting on the floor, the poker across her lap and the gun in her hand.

Stiles nodded sharply. “Yeah. Supposedly, alcohol overdose, but the day after he fingers Chris? And before my dad can get a formal statement? Suspicious. Just as suspicious as these things in the woods that are so weird Peter just had to stop and see, even though he’s in a flood zone and driving away from a murder scene and in a car with you.”

“That’s what I’m trying to _say_ ,” Chris snapped. He pushed himself up on one arm, looking at Stiles. “You _know_. If they’re that—”

“You shot Derek, and now Peter’s stuck out there, if you weren’t lying about that too,” Stiles said. He paced across the doorway again, then jerked to a stop. He ran his hand through his hair and rattled the poker against the ground. “How far off did you two split?”

“You’re not going out in that,” Scott said. He blinked hard, then got off the hearth and went over to Stiles. “Come on, look.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m looking, Scott, and—look, how far?” Stiles pivoted around and stared at Chris.

“Down the hill, take a left at the snag with the burnt streak on the side, left a hundred yards,” Chris said, voice clipped. He pushed himself up more, then winced and pulled his arms in as much as the rope would allow. “Stiles, goddamn it, I shot Derek but those weren’t—”

“Stiles,” Scott said sharply.

“Scott,” Stiles said, just as sharply and far more mockingly. He threw back his shoulders and then yanked the door open. “Well, fuck you, I can’t just—I’m going out on the porch to yell his name, Scotty. If he’s that close, he’ll hear. You can watch me through the windows.”

Then he slammed the door behind him. Scott stood where he was, his hands at his side, a torn look on his face. Then he sighed and shook his head. He looked about the room before crossing over to where Allison was lying. Scott leaned over her and touched one cheek. He rearranged one of the suit-coats pillowing her head, then straightened. Then he went to one of the few windows in the kitchen and leaned forward so he could track something outside, presumably Stiles on the porch.

“I just don’t get why you’d want to kill Jackson,” Lydia said suddenly. She was looking at Chris.

Chris had been looking at Scott again, but he turned a flat, resigned expression on her. “I don’t.”

“Well, somebody set up a show upstairs, and freaked him so badly he jumped over the railing,” she said. She shifted her legs into a different position and toyed with the gun. Then looked up sharply. “Why do you keep looking over there? Do you think he’s going to get back up or what? What is it with you and Stiles?”

“What about Stiles?” Chris said, almost absently. Then he looked back at her, his eyes flicking up and down Lydia while she visibly tried to not look nervous. He took in a slow, shallow breath, then nodded to himself. When he spoke again, his voice was much lower, so soft she had to lean forward to hear him. “Because he should get back up. He should already be up.”

Lydia snorted. Over her shoulder, Scott glanced at them, then resumed looking out the window. She didn’t miss how Chris was eyeing him.

“You shot him through the throat,” Lydia said skeptically. But her voice was lower, clearly pitched so Scott wouldn’t hear. “How’s he supposed to get back up from that?”

“Those are plain bullets in there,” Chris said. He nodded at the gun. “And I didn’t shoot the carotid. Nicked it, maybe, but the blood wasn’t coming out for worse than that. You can go look at the porch if you want.”

“Yes, that sounds like a great idea. Why don’t I investigate the blood stains while you and your family try to murder us all, right after you just gave me yet _another_ reason to think you’re a killer?” Lydia snorted.

“What are you two talking about?” Scott came back over. He stopped in front of Chris, then looked at the fiery burners behind the man. He raised his poker and tapped it twice against the lintel—Chris went rigid, then looked at Scott as if he’d seen a ghost—and then lowered it to just dip the tip into the flames. “Stiles went off the porch. I can still see him, but I don’t like it.”

Lydia spread her hands. “Well, I’m not going out there. He’s the one who keeps talking like this is a movie, he should know what happens when you wander off.”

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s why you don’t have friends, just Jackson’s gang,” Scott said sharply. He glanced back at Allison, then jerked the poker out of the fire and went out the back door.

He didn’t go far. The door didn’t shut fully behind him and the wind edged it open so they could see one leg and a shoulder, standing at the end of the porch.

“Whatever killed Jackson,” Chris suddenly hissed. “You said it was a set-up upstairs. What was it?”

“Pepper’s ghost,” Lydia said, startled. She blinked rapidly. “It’s an optical illusion with mirrors and extra rooms, and it made you look like your reflection was turning into this—this hairy monster thing that was going to come out of the mirror.”

“Like a werewolf?” Chris said. He glanced at Scott, then pulled forward on the rope, staring at her with intense desperation.

Lydia unconsciously shifted back. “How should I know? I don’t know what the hell the psycho was thinking. It was just this monster with fangs and—”

“Look, I didn’t kill Melissa McCall, and I had nothing to do with Stiles’ mother. My father could’ve stolen my car. And that set-up, that wasn’t for Jackson, that had to have been for Scott or Stiles,” Chris said. He twisted his wrists, then cursed as blood started to soak through the bandage on his arm. “They would’ve recognized it. They’re working with the Hales.”

“Wait, what?” Lydia said. She also glanced at Scott. Then she put her hand down as if she were going to rise.

“Wait!” Chris jerked forward, then half-muffled a cry of pain as the rope cut him short. Then he raised his head and seemed to try and hold her with just his gaze. “Wait, please. Listen. I know it sounds insane, but—Derek Hale. Did either of them touch him before I came in?”

Lydia looked nervously at him. She twisted her hands, then stifled an exclamation and brought up the gun as if she’d forgotten she was holding it. “Sit down. And shut up. Like I’m going to believe anything you say about them. I don’t even believe you were really in an accident with Peter Hale—you always carry a gun around?”

“I grabbed it from my car because he was driving, and…there was an accident. All right, I lied about the details, but because he was trying to kill me.” Chris glanced at the back door. He paused and Lydia looked over: Scott was no longer in sight. Then Chris heaved on his bonds again, his voice still low, but going wild with urgency. He didn’t seem to notice, or did but didn’t care, that Lydia had the safety off the gun. “You believe I’m not lying about that, don’t you? With the town gossip? But I didn’t kill him. I got the hell out and came up here to get my daughter, and then Derek and I saw each other and he was going to come after me. I saw it in his face.”

Lydia stared at him. She chewed her lip. Uncertainty was creeping over her face. “But what does that have to do with werewolves? Or Derek’s body?”

“Just tell me. One of them handled him, didn’t they?” Chris hissed. “They did something to him before he could get back up. I bet if you go over there and you look, there’s going to be a puncture wound, a needle mark, something like that. And why would you need that if he’s already dead?”

“I’m not going over there,” Lydia said incredulously. She shook her head, but couldn’t quite look away from him. “Why would Scott want to hurt Derek, anyway?”

Chris stilled. Then he sucked in his breath, just as Lydia groaned and looked furious with herself.

“He’s dating Allison,” Chris said in a hurried whisper. “My father knew. We all—I didn’t like it, all right, fine, I’ve got a motive here, but I didn’t like it for reasons besides Allison. I didn’t like it because I’m tired—you have no _idea_ how tired I am, seeing the people my father hurt, but I couldn’t stop him. And he knew about Scott and he was trying to get at Allison, all the way up to the end. He knew about your mother’s and Victoria’s fight, too. Goddamn it, he knew you and Jackson were dating, he knew Stiles likes you, even if Stiles is—he knew all about all of you. He was the principal, for God’s sake!”

Lydia closed her mouth on whatever she’d been about to say. She still had her palm flat against the floor, but she was twisting on it, indecisive on the direction. She leaned towards Derek’s body, then towards the door. Then towards Derek.

“Just look,” Chris said. His voice cracked, but he didn’t stop looking at her. “Just look. If I’m wrong—”

“If you’re wrong, I’ll know for sure which family’s the crazy one around here,” Lydia muttered. She hesitated a second later, then got up with a disbelieving snort.

The windows lit up with lightning, turning Lydia bone-white against the black room. She raised her hand and shielded her eyes with the gun, but then took another step towards Derek’s body. Then another, and another, and then she was standing over it. She glanced back at Chris, then reluctantly extended the poker and used it to turn Derek’s head.

Lydia looked down for several long seconds. Then she snorted. She made to step back and Chris’ shoulders slumped.

Something caught Lydia’s eye as she moved and she paused, then leaned forward again. She shifted the poker over, then put it down and gingerly touched Derek’s shoulder, pushing at his shirt. Her back stiffened.

“Look out!” Allison screamed.

Chris and Lydia both whipped around. They looked at her, but Allison, still holding the bruised side of her head, was pointing at something next to Lydia. The other girl turned just in time to see the poker as Scott brought it down on her.


	5. Chapter 5

“Scott!”

It was a male voice shouting. Scott ignored it, bringing the poker down two more times, until Lydia’s head was a mess of matted red hair. Then he dropped the poker and smoothly swept up the gun that Lydia had dropped. He spun away from Chris and Allison, then turned completely around and leveled the gun at the boy charging him.

Stiles stuttered to a stop, his eyes wide with disbelief. Then he jerked as the gun fired. He swayed in place, his mouth opening and closing.

Scott fired another shot. The sound of it spurred Stiles back to life, and he turned just in time to see Peter Hale collapse in the doorway, blood pouring from his shoulder and thigh. He swore and rushed over, then pivoted on one knee so he was between Peter and Scott.

“Scott, what the hell are you doing?” Stiles shouted. “What—you just—you killed _Lydia_. Lydia, and—Jackson and Derek and it was just supposed to be Kate who died!”

“Allison,” Chris whispered urgently. “Allison, come here, now.”

“Don’t move,” Scott said. He kept the gun trained on Peter, who was slumped on the floor behind Stiles, still half on the porch. “Stiles, go grab the rope.”

“No.” Stiles spat out the word. He put his hand to his head, then took it down and backed up so he could put it on Peter’s shoulder. He glanced at Peter, then jerked back around and looked longer. His eyes dropped to the black fluid seeping out the bullet holes.

Chris swore. “Those weren’t wolfsbane bullets!” he said. “I didn’t load—”

“Well, they are now,” Scott said. He looked at them with an expression that was somehow mild and yet intensely alien, as if transposed from a completely different dimension onto his face. “Stiles. If you don’t do it, I’m going to put the next one through Peter’s head. If you do, I’ll give you a bullet so he won’t die before we’re done.”

Stiles let a shocked laugh. He couldn’t stop twisting to look at the black stuff slowly soaking Peter’s shirt. “Scott, what the hell? We were just supposed to kill Kate. Get a confession from Chris, send him upriver for a zillion years.”

“Scott?” Allison said, voice faltering.

“Stiles, stop talking to him,” Peter said. He finally moved, shifting his head with obvious effort till he could see into the room. His eyes were very bright and were fixed on Scott.

“What?” Stiles said. He didn’t seem to have heard Peter, and moved his hands impotently in Scott’s direction. “Scott, what… _a_ bullet? You shot him twice, and if those are wolfsbane…goddamn it, Scott, he doesn’t heal like—”

“I know exactly how he heals,” Scott said. He sighed, and again, there was something unidentifiably yet distinctly _off_ about the timbre of his voice, the tilt of his head, the glint of his eyes. It was as if some veil had been pulled away, leaving a gaping hole where they had thought was solid reality. “And I know exactly who killed your mother, so there’s no point in playing anymore. Get the rope, boy.”

“Scott—” Stiles said. His voice broke. He groped blindly behind him, then twisted his hand in Peter’s shirt.

“It’s not Scott,” Peter hissed. “Stiles, it’s not, he doesn’t smell like—”

At the same time, Chris made a choked, despairing sound. “Dad?” he said.

Scott’s mouth stretched in a vicious smile. “Hello, son.”

* * *

“There,” Stiles said. His hands were shaking so much that the last knot dropped from his fingers, rather than him releasing it. “Now give me the bullets.”

“No, I’ll do it.” Scott was standing up on the hearthstone, twirling one poker in the flames. When Stiles balked, he lifted the gun in his hand.

Stiles swallowed hard, his hands clenching and unclenching, but he backed away from the fireplace. He stopped barely a yard away, but when Scott kept pointing the gun at Peter’s head, he made a theatrical grumbling noise and moved back until he was sitting by Allison, near Derek’s body.

“You kill him and I really don’t see why the hell I shouldn’t smash your head in,” Stiles muttered.

“Well, I’m a much better shot than Scott, and also you’re being very cavalier about your best friend’s body,” Scott observed. He glanced sidelong at Stiles, then knelt down and took one bullet out of the gun. After cracking it open and tapping out the contents onto the stone, he stood up again and reached for the poker.

Stiles started up, only to have Allison seize his arm just as Scott corkscrewed the red-hot end of the poker into the small pile of wolfbane. Scott hummed tunelessly, ignoring Stiles’ vitriolic curses, then suddenly stabbed the poker into Peter’s shoulder. 

For a second Allison’s whole weight swung from Stiles’ arm as he froze in place. Then he tumbled over her, snarling, struggling to stay facing the fireplace. “Jesus, you sadistic _asshole_.”

“Takes one to know one. Doesn’t it, Hale?” Scott murmured.

He’d had Stiles tie up Peter identically to Chris, on the other side of the fireplace. Peter hadn’t resisted; the wolfsbane was snaking thick black lines across his shoulder and down his chest, looking like black crayon under the wet white dress shirt, and greasy dark sweat was beginning to drip off Peter’s jaw and temple. When the poker went into his shoulder, Peter had let out a ragged roar, but that had quickly turned into a coughing fit that left his nose and mouth smeared with black. 

The moment the poker was out, he folded over the edge of the hearthstone, holding himself as if his ribs were still compromised. He didn’t answer Scott.

“You have to do the other one,” Stiles said. He put his hand out, then jerked it back and looked wildly at Scott. “He’s going to die, Scott—”

“It’s _not_ Scott,” Chris rasped.

“No.” Scott’s nose wrinkled as he looked over. He thrust the poker back into the flames and scraped it against something, then pulled it out and studied the glowing tip. Then he took a step towards Chris, who was straining to look at his face and not the poker. “Well, son, I’m glad to see you learned something under me, after all. It’s a pity you’ve only come to use it now.”

The poker suddenly dropped to Chris’ leg. Chris twisted away, trying to pull his knee under him, but it was the injured one and the pain of bending it was apparently greater than the pain of searing iron. But not by much: he struggled between the two while Allison shrieked at Scott to stop. This time Stiles held her back, locking his arms around her middle till she abruptly collapsed, out of breath.

“You disloyal piece of shit,” Scott said. His voice was calm and measured. “You know, Chris, I have to commend Scott. For all that he’s just as much of a monster-lover as the rest of you, he at least had some sense of family. He was so very, _very_ distressed about his poor, confused girlfriend, who rightly had no idea to trust, what with everyone telling her a different lie…well, you know, he came to see me. He thought he might be able to reconcile us if he brought an outsider’s perspective to the table.”

“He wouldn’t,” Stiles snapped. “You killed his mom. Didn’t you?”

Scott shrugged. “Regrettably, yes, but then he’d stopped meeting with me. Something about not believing that I had Allison’s best interests at heart. I didn’t quite have him yet, so I needed him to come back.”

“So you ran her over,” Allison said slowly. Tears were still streaming down her face, but she pushed Stiles aside with an almost-steady hand. “She didn’t just find out about Stiles’ mom, she found out what you were doing to him, and you ran her over. You hit her, and he—”

“—was so shocked at seeing his mother die in front of him, so utterly destroyed. The poor boy. He didn’t know what to do. He was like the walking dead. No will left.” Scott’s face shifted into a sympathetic expression that chilled the air around him, despite the roaring fire at his back. “And yes, Stiles, you always want the picky little details. I used Chris’ car because I knew you were interested in us. You see, Scott’s mind was so full of your idea to flush us out. He wasn’t sure, bless his innocent heart, but you were. You just knew Chris was in on it, you had the Hales and your father all lined up behind you, you’d even thought of how to keep Kate in town after the funeral if there wasn’t a family reason. I couldn’t have arranged it better myself, and I needed to update my will anyway, so I thought, why not lend a hand?”

For a moment Stiles looked as if he were going to retch. He raised his hand almost to his mouth, then put it down. “My mother was _sick_ ,” he finally said. “Not possessed, you lunatic.”

“She was practice,” Scott said blandly.

Stiles went deathly still.

“Cancer, unfortunately, is a long, drawn-out affair,” Scott said. He shook his head, looking genuinely distressed. “I do hope you’re spared it yourself. Anyway, I was already considering alternatives, but I’m hardly the kind of man to jump in without testing the waters. Your mother was conveniently near to hand, and her disease was a useful excuse for a few extra symptoms, but unfortunately, her mind was too mature. It’s very difficult to truly subsume another personality. You need someone young, someone not sure who they really are, someone with—”

“Stiles!” Peter snarled, snapping out of his trembling, feverish state.

With a jerk and a gasp, Stiles seemed to fall out of his enraged haze, dropping back to the floor just as Scott readied the poker for a swing at him. He coughed, then pawed weakly at Allison as she tried to pull him up. Then he bolted upright, his and Peter’s pained cries mixing.

Scott lifted the poker from Peter’s chest, then shook it reprovingly in Peter’s face, the still-red tip a bare inch from Peter’s eye. “Very charming, Hale. But you can rest assured that my taste doesn’t run to young boys, unlike some here.”

“I’m old enough to know you’re full of shit,” Stiles snapped. He twitched when the poker edged towards Peter’s eye.

“What I don’t understand,” Peter said carefully, softly, staring past the poker into Scott’s face. “Your leaving us alive for so long. You were well enough for it.”

“Yes, well, I suppose it’s a cliché but there’s some truth in the adage that death gives you a new perspective.” Scott shrugged. “When Kate reported that she’d missed a few of you, I was annoyed. But I’d also just had my diagnosis, and I started to think: if I got rid of you all, I’d just have to start over with the next pack. Because you’re like rats, always more. And then I made up my mind when your niece came out of the crash no longer an alpha. You’re bloodyminded enough to hold this town for your lifetime, Hale, but with no alpha, it’ll be no longer than that. In the meantime, you’re a known quantity and I can take my time growing up. Because—”

“You want Allison,” Chris breathed. He swallowed a few times, his mouth staying slackly open in horror. “It’s not Scott. You just need him to get to her.”

“And Hale so Stiles here will help, since Scott is demonstrably terrible at the simplest spells, and you, son, so Allison won’t go and do anything silly, like stab herself with a kitchen knife to get out of helping me,” Scott sighed. He smiled at Allison and Chris’s flinches. “Now that that’s all cleared up, shall we get started?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this universe, Peter got out of the hospital faster because Derek and Laura stayed, but since Laura lost alpha status healing herself, all three of them are weakened betas. They're still a default pack. Also, they weren't able to move against the Argents so much because one, I figure that _two_ long-term care patients would significantly drain any insurance money, and two, Gerard Argent being around meant that Peter and Laura concentrated on first making friends with the local authorities so they stayed highly visible in town and therefore couldn't be easily made to disappear (I suppose the in-canon lack of concern for all of the Argents' throwaway kills/collateral damage must come from the same place as Sunnydale's obliviousness).
> 
> No other packs moved in because Gerard Argent decided to move to Beacon Hills several years early, and he is terrifying.
> 
> If you're sensing hints that Gerard has previously abused Chris and/or Allison, and caused Victoria's death, you'd be right.


	6. Chapter 6

Chris was crying. Very quietly, mostly audible as the occasional hitch in breath. “Dad,” he said. “Dad, _please_ , please don’t do this. Please, anything else. Just not Allison, please…”

“I still don’t know where I went wrong with him, you know.” Scott watched Stiles finish up the chalk circle, one hand resting lightly on the gun in his belt. “Kate was—flawed as well, but at least she had some gumption.”

“She was a psychopathic bitch who never met somebody she didn’t want to fuck with,” Stiles muttered. The chalk wobbled and he cursed, then tensed and glanced over at the fireplace. When the poker stayed out of Peter’s body, he licked his thumb, wiped off the error, and then resumed drawing. “I’m pretty sure what you call gumption, the rest of us call a big blinking sign to come kill me, kill me please, before my daddy issues start showing.”

Scott snorted, but his eyes were icy. He looked at Peter. “Is he this charming in the bedroom?”

Peter had sunk to lay his head against the floor. His skin was clammy-looking and ashen, and the tips of black tendrils had begun to show over his waistband where his shirt had crumpled up, but he managed a dismissive shrug. “Forgive me if I’d rather not bring you in there,” he muttered. 

“There,” Stiles said. He sat back on his heels and wiped at his brow and jaw, then looked up at Scott. “Now give me that other bullet.”

“So long as you remember I’ve more than enough left for both of you.” Scott pulled the gun out from his belt. He cracked open the clip, then paused and nudged the back of Peter’s shoulder with his toe. When Peter didn’t react, he shook out a bullet and tossed it to Stiles. “Really, Stiles, you’re a bright boy. I think you could do better.”

“I think you can take a fucking jump into hell,” Stiles snapped. He scooted around the circle and got over to Peter’s side, where he frantically worked at the top of the bullet.

Scott sighed, shrugged, and then turned to Allison, who froze under Scott’s gaze. She had drawn herself up with her knees to her chest, Stiles’ jacket thrown over her legs. At his gesture, she shivered, but then drew herself slowly to her feet. “Dad,” she said, as Chris let out a low, despairing moan. “Dad, it’s okay.”

“Good girl,” Scott said approvingly. “I knew the blood hadn’t completely run out.”

Allison hesitated. She didn’t look at him, but stared instead at the circle marked out on the floor. Her arms tightened around herself. She drew a deep breath, lifted her foot, and—

—then threw her body forward in a flurry of motion. She flipped clear over the circle and landed on the hearthstone. Her elbow and shins collided with the stone sides and she cried out, but kept moving, spinning herself at knee-level till she could throw herself over her father.

Scott had dodged, apparently thinking she was attacking him. He realized his mistake and slewed round, gun first. Then he swore and jerked it down. He swore again, hearing a noise behind him, and pivoted to fire just as Derek lunged at him.

The gunshot missed, but Derek had to dive to the side to avoid it. He recovered and twisted around, only to nearly have his head taken off by some kind of blade dropping from the ceiling.

Peter yanked him back, then collapsed heavily against him, spitting up a foul-smelling black liquid and still trailing pieces of rope. Derek grabbed him on reflex, then dragged him back as another blade dropped in front of them.

“Get out into the hall!” Chris snapped. He was throwing himself against his bonds while Stiles and Allison sawed at them with one of the blades, and then he fell onto his wounded arm as a rope gave. He hissed, then looked up, saw Scott pointing the gun at him and slammed himself against Allison to get out of the way. The last rope snapped and Allison dragged frantically at him.

Meanwhile, Stiles had scrambled back across the fireplace and slapped off the gas. The flames extinguished with a gusty _whoosh_ , a bare second before something burst out of the chimney in an explosion of soot. 

It barreled over Scott but didn’t get a good hold on him, thanks to a poker swing that cracked at least one bone. The thing landed awkwardly, writhing back into a drenched woman clutching at her left thigh. She threw a punch that knocked Scott towards the back door, then hobbled forward and grabbed Peter’s arm.

She and Derek hauled Peter into the hall. A second later, Stiles and Allison, dragging Chris between them, followed. Stiles let go of Chris to jerk the door shut, then exclaimed as something shot towards him.

Peter slapped Stiles out of the way, then swore as the arrow cut across his arm. Black bubbles covered his lips. “Argent, where—” he coughed.

“Library. Down, left, second door. Get inside, it’s defensible,” Chris said. “Might also have whatever the hell he used.”

“Well, shit, this is some funhouse you have here,” Stiles said to Allison. He grabbed Chris’ arm again, then flattened both Chris and Allison to the ground as a whole flight of arrows peppered the walls above them. “Peter. Peter, tell me that asshole didn’t give me the wrong bullet.”

“It’s the right one, it’s just—damn.” Peter spat out more bile, then slumped against Laura. His eyes rolled back into his head.

Derek didn’t look very well either. He had blood matted up and down one leg from a series of small gouges, and his healing hadn’t fully shaken off whatever he’d been injected with. He struggled under his uncle’s weight, then nearly fell to his knees as Laura started to haul Peter down the hall. Then he pushed himself back up. He shoved his sister and his uncle to the side to avoid another set of arrows, then grabbed Peter and tossed him onto Laura’s back. Then he twisted around.

Scott had appeared at the end of the hall. The gun was shoved into his belt, while in one hand he held a poker, and in the other, lifted high over his head, he held what looked like a bead necklace. The beads clicked rapidly through his fingers, precisely in time with the arrows and blades coming at them.

Derek pushed Stiles out of the way, then grabbed the nearest piece of furniture—a hefty wrought-iron and glass lamp—and hurled it at Scott, temporarily stopping the barrage. Then he hurried after the others.

They piled up before the library door, which was firmly locked and which was resisting both the runes Stiles was scrawling around the keyhole and Laura’s more straightforward pounding. Allison pushed at both of them, and when they ignored her, she stepped back and then rammed her shoulder into Laura. Then she jammed something into the keyhole while Laura was still straightening up.

“I have a key,” she said breathlessly. “Just to here, just this room, I didn’t want to say because he gave it to me, for when I wanted to come listen to him, and I didn’t, God, I didn’t, but God, thank you, thank you, it _works_.”

The lock tumblers clicked into place. Laura ripped open the door and then all but threw her uncle and brother into the room. She held it for the rest of them, then hauled it shut behind them, barely remembering to grab the key out of the lock as she did.

The keyring slipped out of her fingers. She cursed and grabbed it from the floor, then frowned. Then she lifted them to look at the blood still slicking the keys.

Allison snatched them from her and hastily locked the door, and then stepped back. “I saw your eye twitch and I knew what it was,” she said, half-defiant, half-apologetic. “He—Gerard—he showed me a vial once. Kanima venom, he said, and I knew—I couldn’t think of another way to get it out of you—”

“It’s okay,” Derek panted. He’d dropped to the floor and was rubbing at the closing wounds on his leg. His fingers still looked half-paralyzed. “It’s okay, it worked, it got me up again.”

“Well, for once with your family,” Laura muttered. She was still limping, but she was by far the most composed of any of them.

Peter had regained consciousness, but he could barely keep his head up, even with Stiles cradling it to his chest. Chris was lying a few feet away, blowing breaths like a winded racehorse. When Allison dropped on her knees by him, he seized onto her as if he meant to crush her ribs; she sobbed and buried her head in his shoulder.

“So, you hear much?” Stiles said.

“Probably most of it.” Laura darted over to a couch, then pushed it at a grating half-run till it was barring the door. Then she turned and regarded the large bay across from them, with its slit windows, barely large enough to pass a hand through. “Gonna steal his granddaughter’s body, keep us as cripples, all that. Sorry I’m late, Peter overdid the accident so I wanted to make sure your dad got to town before I doubled back.”

“Oh, good, he’s okay.” Stiles’ shoulders slumped. 

Laura kept moving, pacing around the room till she’d checked all the walls. It only took a minute—the room was more of a study, with the main room lined with shelves and a small nook off to the side, which held little more than a desk and a small safe. There was only the one door, and all the windows were the same type of slits as the bay had. “Are you sure there’s no traps here?” she said.

“No,” Chris said. He lifted his head from Allison, then moved as if he would’ve thrown up his hands, if they hadn’t still been tied together and one arm hadn’t been bleeding. “I don’t know what I have to say—I don’t mix with my father, I don’t know what he’s doing, I didn’t know about any of—I just know, the library, it’s the safe room. It’s always the safe room with us. So I don’t _think_ he’d put any here.”

“Well, if he had, you’d think they would have gone off already,” Stiles said. He reluctantly eased apart from Peter and then got to his feet, scanning the shelves. “So you didn’t know he was going to basically fuck over everybody in this room? Repeatedly? Over multiple years?”

Chris opened his mouth, then jarred forward as a series of loud explosions seemed to occur all around the room. One managed to make the door shiver, but as they all stared with held breath, the wood didn’t break.

“I knew what he was like. I knew he wasn’t going to stop.” Chris took a rasping breath. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, all right? I’m sorry I didn’t kill him myself.”

“Well, he can’t—we couldn’t,” Allison said. She got to her feet and stared straight back at Stiles, her hands in fists at her hips. “Don’t you think we talked about it? God, don’t you think my _aunt_ wanted to? She wanted to kill the whole damn world. She didn’t care what, she just wanted to do it, and—and he knew _that_ , too. So he did something so none of us can touch him.”

“Huh.” Stiles blinked a few times. “Thorough.” He started to turn back to the books, then paused. “But you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know about your mother,” Chris said slowly. “I might have—wondered after. But I didn’t know the real reason why, and I didn’t want to talk about it because the moment you started looking into it, he’d start looking into you. If I’d known…if I’d known before about any of it, I would have warned you.”

Stiles pressed his lips together. He glanced to the side, where Peter and Derek were sitting, and then—flinched as something beat on the door. “Fuck it,” he muttered. He started pawing through the books. “Fuck, okay, demonology, demonology, cooking for…for merfolk, the hell, more demons…”

“Index,” Laura said. She was flipping through a thick three-ringed binder. “Transformation…no. Transmutation, transposition. Transposition of the soul, here, shelf R-23.”

“If he still has one.” Peter was twisted over on his belly, peering at a shelf just above the floor. He fluttered his fingers across the spines, then stopped on one. “Stiles. Smells like he handled this just before he died.”

Stiles whirled and skittered over, climbing haphazardly over Peter in his haste. He absently wrapped his arm over Peter’s shoulders and braced the book between the floor and his foot, flipping one-handed. Then he exhaled irritably. “Fuck, it’s…what is this?”

“Greek,” Peter said. He nudged at Stiles with his shoulder. “This is how to make it permanent.”

Something battered the door. One hinge whined dangerously, as if it were on the verge of cracking. Derek and Laura looked at each other, and then Laura pulled her brother to his feet, so they were both facing the door.

Stiles turned the page and Peter squinted at the faded writing. Then nodded. “ _This_ is how to reverse it.”

“Well, what?” Allison said. She took a step towards them. “How do we get Scott back?”

“You…you have to reach him,” Peter muttered. “He’s still there, Gerard hasn’t made the binding permanent so it’s still like possession, except without the religious trappings. You need to get him to fight Gerard, throw him out. And then—oh.”

Allison took another couple steps towards them. Her voice rose even above the din of groaning wood and keening metal. “What? _What_?”

“It’s _not_ like possession because you can’t bar the way once he’s out,” Peter said slowly. He pursed his lips, then slowly slid his hand onto Stiles’ back, then up to Stiles’ shoulder. “Gerard’s always going to be able to get back in when Scott slips. And you can’t just kill Scott, or else you might end up with an undead Gerard, if the will’s strong enough…you have to shoot him with a bullet…that you’d…”

“A special bullet, which they’d already discussed,” Stiles guessed. He and Allison were looking at each other. “Because your grandfather is a smug, grandstanding _dick_.”

His voice was shaking, both with anger and with something quieter, but no less fierce. He rolled his shoulder as Peter squeezed it, then dropped onto his elbows and clasped his hands over his head.

“We have to shoot him?” Allison said faintly. She looked dazed.

The crash of splintering wood woke her up; she jumped sideways and fell against a bookshelf. A gleaming point protruded through the door, the size of a man’s fist. Long shards of wood fell from the hole as the point was forced in farther, till wicked barbs behind it squeezed through and then hooked to either side of the hole.

“That looks medieval,” Laura said. Even she looked stunned.

“It is medieval.” Chris pushed himself up against the wall, cradling his bad arm. “He’s got a collection in the basement. He’s going to pull the doors out.”

“Oh, fu…” Derek shook his head, then grabbed a nearby chair. He smashed it, then handed a broken leg to his sister and kept another for himself.

“Don’t kill him,” Peter snapped. He’d twisted over and was shredding off the remains of his bonds, his back to the books and his arm bent in front of Stiles. “If you kill him without that bullet, Gerard can come back as something _worse_.”

“We can’t kill him,” Allison said, shaking. She was backing away from the door, moving her head slowly from side to side. Her foot tripped as she went over the divider between the main room and the nook, and then she steadied herself against the wall. “Oh, God, Scott, _Scott_ …”

Stiles finally raised his head. His eyes were red and swollen. “I don’t want to,” he said. “I don’t want to, he’s my best friend, but if he breaks through we don’t have any—”

The doors ripped away. Something giant and on wheels rolled in, then wedged in the doorway. At the same time, a flurry of arrows lanced through the air. They mostly went straight ahead, but enough angled to either side to keep everyone scrambling.

An arrow went through Chris’ pant leg, pinning it to the shelves. He snarled and twisted, ripping the fabric, and then rolled behind an overturned chair. “Allison?” he shouted. “Allison?”

Peter hissed, then let out a strangled roar as Stiles ripped the arrow out of his calf. Then he seized Stiles by the shoulder and shoved him down, ducking as Laura leaped overhead.

She landed on the—wagon wedged in the door, grabbing an arrow just before it would have gone into her eye. In a blink she’d flipped the arrow around in her hand and used it to stab at something on the other side of the wagon, only to fall back, clutching at her smoking side.

Derek let out a hoarse shout and yanked Laura off the wagon and behind the frail shelter of another chair. He slapped frantically at her, then threw something out into the middle of the room: her damp, singed jacket, wrapped around a still-smoldering arrow.

“I’m not that attached to the house,” came Scott’s voice. The distinctive _skrrch_ of a match being struck followed, and then the flickering lightning outside was joined by the flickering lick of flames around an upheld arrowhead. “Oh, don’t look like that. Are you really so surprised?”

“Dad,” Chris said desperately. He elbowed his arm over the top of the chair shielding him, then struggled to half-stand, one leg visibly shaking under him. “Dad. Please. There has to be some other—please, just—you can have my body, just get out of Scott and—”

“Son, do you _ever_ listen?” Scott sighed. 

An arrow zipped out and buried in Chris’ shoulder, knocking him back into the shelves. He grabbed at it, face twisted in pain, and then froze at whatever he was seeing.

“Besides, I’ve had quite enough of you and your sister.” Scott moved out from behind the wagon, loaded crossbow in one hand, flaming arrow in the other. He aimed the crossbow at Chris’ heart while lifting the arrow, letting it twirl a little between his fingers. Then he plunged it into the side of the wagon.

The flames raced up and over the top, then down the wheels with shocking speed. Wood crackled and popped with the ominous sharpness of well-seasoned, very dry tinder.

“What are you doing?” Chris cried. “We’re all going to burn!”

“If you insist,” Scott shrugged. “But then, you did choose to come into my house.”

“It’s not your house,” Stiles suddenly said. He pushed at the arm Peter had over him, getting to his feet.

Peter had been staring glassy-eyed at the flaming wagon, but he jerked to life at the movement, belatedly grabbing at Stiles’ hip. He tried to rise as well, but only got so far as his knees before swaying alarmingly.

Stiles reached back and seized Peter’s shoulder, steadying him, but he continued to face Scott. “It’s not. You live at 135 Benefit Street, in a…a two-story normal house, Scott, not some insane Dark Age torture trap. You don’t live here. You know—”

Scott pivoted, shot a bolt at Stiles and then reloaded in efficient, brisk motions. He swept the crossbow around the room, bringing Derek and Chris to a halt before they’d more than twitched. “Oh, please,” Scott said. “Do any of you really think that’s going to work?”

“Well, you missed,” Stiles said. He was shaky and abnormally cheerful, and his grip on Peter’s shoulder was white-knuckled. He grinned wildly when Scott looked disbelievingly over, then nodded at the bolt embedded just an inch from his head.

“Stiles,” Peter said very quietly. He’d jerked up when the bolt had gone off, but still wasn’t strong enough to do more than wrap his arm around Stiles’ waist. His eyes were fixed on the fresh bolt in the crossbow; he had claws and fangs showing, but an attempt to shift further left him dangerously pale.

“ _Wait_ ,” Stiles hissed, not looking down. Then he set his shoulders and deliberately took a step forward.

He dragged Peter with him for that step, and then Peter dropped his arm and went to hands and knees behind Stiles, crawling wide for a clear line at Scott. 

Snorting, Scott reached behind his back, then pulled out the gun. He aimed it not at Peter, but at Laura, who had been edging to circle Scott from behind, and settled the crossbow on Stiles. Peter snarled and rocked on his feet, but it was clear to everyone that he was still weak from the wolfsbane. He might not make a clean leap, not without help; his eyes flicked to Derek and he snarled again, seeing his nephew preoccupied with the gun trained on Laura.

“I don’t know if it’s going to _work_ , you know, but hey, you said you need me to help with the spell,” Stiles continued, his voice overly bright. He took another step, then stopped, his hands held high. “You _always_ need me to help out, Scott.”

“I need you because having a separate spellcaster is more convenient than rigging it up to do it myself, but convenience goes by the wayside sometimes,” Scott said. He tightened his grip on the crossbow. “You’re dearly trying my patience, Stiles.”

“Wayside, dearly, wow, been watching _Downton Abbey_ again?” Stiles said. His voice went thin and he cleared his throat, then stifled a cough; the smoke rising from the burning wagon had hit the ceiling and was beginning to pool towards the floor. “You know, Scotty, there’s really nothing wrong with liking that stuff. Not my bag, not enough darkness and destruction, but hey, to each their own. Me and my dad have our seitan burgers, you and your mom have PBS night. Had. Fuck.”

Scott opened his mouth, then paused. He shook his head and let out an irritated noise. “Allison? Allison, my dear—”

“Oh, my God, we had this discussion about pet names,” Stiles suddenly snapped. He coughed as if it were just a minor annoyance, and not as if he was echoing the others in the room. “Scott, for fuck’s sake, no. I’ll put up with your mooning about her hair and her smile and her stupid _hands_ , damn it, but I’m not going to sit here and listen to you call her _sweetheart_ and _bae_ and—”

“Stiles, I—” Scott roared. He jerked forward—Peter lunged at _Stiles_ , apparently meaning to knock him away from the crossbow, but Stiles sidestepped—then staggered, shaking his head violently. Then Scott whipped it up. He stared blankly at Stiles. “I’ve never called her bae, what are you—”

He went stiff just as Stiles’ fist smashed into his face. Scott dropped the crossbow, then threw himself backwards. Stiles had his wrist and their arms stretched to full length, then separated as Scott dove _under_ the wagon, skidding back into the hall.

“Got it, got it,” Stiles gasped, fumbling with the gun. Then he yelped and tripped, and Peter barely dragged him away before the wagon crashed in on itself, scattering flaming embers where he’d just stood.

“Give it to me, I’ve got the bullet.” Allison appeared beside Stiles, clutching something between both hands. She nodded towards the nook. “There’s a hidden door, I think it goes out—”

“You don’t have a key,” Scott called to them. He held up something, smiling, and then turned an indulgent look on Allison. “I’ll throw it over if you stay, my dear. Everyone else can leave safely.”

“You’re lying,” Allison muttered. Between them, she and Stiles managed to shake out the remaining bullets and load the one from Gerard’s desk. Then she got the gun away from Stiles and snapped her arms up into firing stance; his protest was cut short by a gasping inhale and he ducked down to the clearer air near the floor. “You’re lying—”

Chris went into a coughing fit behind her, sliding down the shelves. She shuddered, then raised the gun.

“You’re lying,” she called out. She hunched over to rub her eye against her shoulder without looking away; tears were rolling down her cheeks. “That key sets off an arrow trap, or mountain ash, or _something_. You’re not letting us out.”

“Well, you will, Allison,” Scott said, raising his eyebrow. “By the virtue of being my only surviving grandchild, and no more, but I do need your body. This boy has his points, namely, a completely spineless mind, but sadly, his gender disqualifies him from your inheritance.”

“He’s not spineless!” Allison screamed. She let out a racking sob, then scrubbed her shoulder over her eye again. “Scott, Scott! Scott—Scott, I love you, I love you so much, I don’t want to do this but I can’t, I can’t let him have you. I can’t keep—I can’t keep _losing_ people, Scott. You know that—my mom, when she died, when I found out why she _really_ killed herself—he takes everybody from me, Scott. Everybody. Everyone but you, I thought—and I can’t—”

Scott laughed. It was a long, long laugh, going on and on until it seemed unreal. And then it went on some more, turning thin and hacking as Scott began to run out of breath. He jerked, his face still in a rictus of humor, and then jerked again. His hand rose to his throat as if to claw at it, and then he abruptly spun and slammed into the wall behind him.

Allison gasped, then took a reflexive step forward. She hopped back as the wagon threw out another scattering of burning splinters. “Scott!”

Scott stumbled back from the wall, then slewed around. His eyes were wide and horrified as he took in the scene before him. His head shook slowly back and forth. Then he saw something. He dove for it.

A horrible grinding noise filled the air, sending almost everyone to their knees, and those who were already there, belly-down to the ground. Laura pounded her forehead against the carpet, almost crazed between the smoke-soaked air and the metallic keen in her ears, and then looked up. “It’s out!” she shouted.

The wagon had rolled back a few feet. It was still on fire, and so were parts of the carpet and the wall, but through the flickering flames they could see a gap between the wagon and the doorway. Laura grabbed her brother and shoved him through, then twisted back. She dodged Allison and Chris, then dropped to seize her uncle’s shoulders. Peter didn’t resist but he also didn’t uncurl from a half-conscious Stiles, so in the end she had to drag both at once. The flames flared suddenly and Laura fell back, cringing. She let out a terrified whine, staring at her frantic brother on the other side of the fire.

Peter lifted his head to see what was the matter. His head and shoulders went back as he flinched, but he stuttered to a stop as Stiles twisted in a rough, retching motion against his chest. He blinked away the daze and lashed out with his arm, hitting Laura in the backs of the legs.

She fell through the gap. Peter got up on his knees, still cradling Stiles, and then pivoted so his back was to the fire. He kicked himself partway through and then the others dragged him the rest of the way through. His hair momentarily caught fire, but that was quickly smothered out by Derek.

“Keep going!” someone yelled at them. Chris, staring at a line of flames racing up the hallway wall towards the ceiling.

They stumbled in a panicked mob towards the front door. For a moment the door seemed to be locked and Derek readied himself to try and smash it open, but then Allison got in front of him. She pulled instead of pushed, and got it open. Then they spilled out through it, choking and shaking. They staggered across the porch and down the front steps, and then heaved themselves across the lawn while behind them, red and yellow flames licked up first one, then another window. Then all of them, lighting up the house like a firecracker against the matte, cloud-filled sky.

* * *

“He’s going to come back,” Scott said. He was standing closest to the house, with his back to the rest of them. His shoulders and arms and hands were shaking. He leaned down to steady them on his knees, then looked to the side. “I can feel him, in my head. Allison, Stiles—everyone, I’m so, so sorry…”

“It’s—it’s not your fault, Scott,” Stiles whispered. In the clear air he’d revived some, but he didn’t seem to have the strength to lift himself from where he and Peter were piled into Derek and Laura. “Scott, it’s not, it’s…shit, can’t we…can’t we…”

“We can’t. I can feel him coming back already and we can’t risk it.” Scott’s jaw tightened. He looked at Stiles, then at Allison. His eyes softened and his mouth started to curl into a smile. Then he shook it away, and looked at the gun lying on the ground. “I’m not going to risk it. I’m not letting him hurt anyone else, ever again.”

Then he reached for the gun.

His fingers were nearly on it when it suddenly yanked away in a flurry of dead leaves. He looked up and then stared at Allison.

“I’m sorry, Scott.” She held the gun so it nearly touched his forehead. Allison was crying again, fresh tracks overlaying the ones already smearing thickly on her cheeks, and her voice cracked on every word, but her hands were steady. “But I have to be sure.”

And then she pulled the trigger.

She screamed over the sound of the gunshot. Stiles screamed too, and then collapsed into Peter, burying his face in the man’s shoulder. Scott just kept staring at them, his body strangely taut as it hung in the air. 

Then, far too slowly, he toppled over. His arms fanned out around him. His feet moved and Allison hitched, jerking up the gun, but it was just his legs settling. She watched him for another minute, trembling and sobbing, and then she gently folded onto her knees next to him and put her face into his back. Her father heaved himself up beside her and gingerly put his arm over her, his own eyes wet; she shuddered, then moved to grab his hand but otherwise stayed where she was.

The rain had long since stopped. It was so far into night that day had crept up on them, unnoticed amid the lurid glare that the burning house gave off. But the sky was indeed lightening, slowly but surely, and as Laura lifted her head for a mournful howl, the first rays of dawn began to filter down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The address is real, and belongs to a house in Providence, Rhode Island that was part of the inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft's story _The Shunned House_. The Gerard possession idea is somewhat influenced by Lovecraft's story _The Thing on the Doorstep_ , and somewhat by the Agatha Christie short story _The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael_.
> 
> If you'll remember, Stiles was too busy fretting over Peter to really check Derek's body. Otherwise yeah, he would've noticed too.
> 
> Jackson and Lydia ended up dead because Gerard needed Allison to be completely freaked out and demoralized in order to successfully take her over, and he didn't start out planning for Chris to die (he still needs minions, Chris hates him but demonstrably--in canon, even!--can't seem to confront him head-on without company).
> 
> I am totally making up the possession vs. transposition of the soul distinction, so any resemblance to actual occult ideas is accidental. Basically, in this 'verse, possession means you have two souls in one body, transposition means you eventually kick out the second soul so it ends up a one-for-one swap.


	7. Chapter 7

“I got it out of the library. Well, what’s left of it.” Stiles shrugged and toyed with the papers in his hand. They were wrinkled, with a coffee stain in one corner, as if they’d been paged through over and over again. “Couple books were in a metal chest, and then there were some more in the safe. That fucker really thought about all the angles.”

Peter hadn’t said a word since he’d come up the hill and found Stiles perched on a tombstone, facing the new grave under the McCall marker. He still looked a little ashen and thin, despite the expensive, smoothly-tailored suit, and as he leaned against the tombstone next to Stiles, he briefly gripped his thigh where he’d been shot.

“I know, I know. You raise the dead, you always get way more than you ask for. I’m not stupid,” Stiles said shortly. He pulled up his feet and braced them against the stone, then hunched over to grab his knees. “I’m not Gerard either.”

“No one’s said that,” Peter finally said. He reached out and touched Stiles’ back; when Stiles stilled, he lifted his hand and brushed the backs of his knuckles over the side of Stiles’ neck. Then he withdrew, a moment before Stiles got his hand up to push at him. “No one is going to advise you as to the morality here, Stiles. You know us well enough—well, known us as we are now.”

Stiles snorted. His hand was still up, and after letting it hang for a second, he reached over and grabbed Peter’s fingers. “I miss him,” he said quietly. 

The papers crumpled in his tightened grip. He glanced at them, then folded them one-handed and stuffed them into the pocket of his coat, hopping off the tombstone. He looked at the grave a last time, then closed his eyes as Peter slowly drew him away.

When he opened them again, he was looking down the other side of the hill, where Derek and Laura were leaning against the front of Peter’s car. Stiles let out a sharp bark of a laugh, but he was pressing easily into Peter’s side. “My dad really called out the guard, huh.”

“Well, he can hardly supervise the movers and retrieve you,” Peter said mildly. He leaned over and breathed into Stiles’ hair, then smiled and kissed Stiles’ temple. “Let’s not test him today, shall we? I appreciate his own change in moral values far too much to do that to the man.”

“Yeah, sure, and you two haven’t been checking out wolf sightings in Idaho.” Stiles leaned his head against Peter’s shoulder, then looked sharply at him. “Idaho? Seriously?”

Peter shrugged. “Needs must, Stiles, and before we move further the pack needs an alpha. They’re the closest reports.”

“I still have a hard time believing you’re really ready to leave this town,” Stiles said. “I think we’re all glad about it, but you and the Argents—”

“Chris let me know he’s leaving, too, and in the opposite direction.” Peter’s pace slowed. He considered the sky, then the boy walking next to him. “It’s by no means the end of the matter, Stiles. But even I can concede that this town is unlucky ground. You should always be the one choosing your battlefield.”

“Stop quoting _Art of War_ ,” Stiles said absently.

“Paraphrasing,” Peter corrected. He smiled again as Stiles elbowed him, then used the motion to sling his arm around Stiles’ waist. “At any rate, let’s see you through college first. Neither Derek nor Laura managed it, and I’d like to not be the only breadwinner when we’re through with them.”

“Oh, my _God_ , do you even listen to yourself?” Stiles said affectionately. He laughed, curling closer under Peter’s arm, and together they headed down the hill.

The sound of Stiles’ laughter had barely faded when another pair arrived at Scott’s grave. Even with the aid of a crutch and a hinged cage around his knee, Chris leaned heavily on Allison’s shoulder. He hobbled awkwardly to the nearest headstone, then rested against it, panting, his heavily-bandaged arm clutched to his stomach.

“We’ll leave right from here,” he promised Allison. Then he grimaced. “You don’t…have to rush, Allison. If you need some time, the car’s not going anywhere.”

“No, I want to get out of here,” she said. She smiled wanly at him, then turned to the grave.

For a while she stood at the foot of the grave, just looking down at it. Then she shivered. She raised her arm across her body, then lowered it and carefully got down on her knees.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She touched each letter of the name carved into the stone, then put her hand down. It had been curled, but now she spread out her fingers and pressed her palm against the dirt. “I’m sorry, Scott. I’m so sorry. I wish we had more time.”

Chris shifted against the tombstone, then stifled a grunt of pain. He hastily turned his grimace into a tight smile when Allison looked back over her shoulder, then just as badly hid his relief as she began to get up. “Are you sure?” he said.

“Yes,” she said after a second. She glanced back at the grave, then smiled. Then she went over to her father and took him by the arm, and helped him back to the path. “Yes. Let’s go.”

“It’ll be better,” Chris said. He limped a few steps, then sighed. “I should stop making that promise. I’m—Allison, listen, we’re going to try with everything we have, and at the very least, I swear it’ll be different. It’s never going to happen again.”

“Better,” Allison said slowly. She looked away from him, then ducked her head and maneuvered him around a fallen marker. When she lifted her head again, she was smiling, distant and thoughtful. “Yeah, you’re right. It’ll be different this time.”

Behind her, in the clear winter sun, a single bullet winked next to Scott’s headstone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter is the oldest, so when they're all betas he ends up default leader. Laura is considerably more on-board with the violent revenge spree plan after her own long, painful recovery, and the sheriff's morality has been eroded by years and years of being publicly stonewalled by Gerard Argent while innocent people die.
> 
> I'm not explaining the ending. It's supposed to be creepily ambiguous, in the tradition of horror movie end scenes everywhere.


End file.
